I Will Teach You To Be Rich - 25. “I want to pay for convenience, but my husband thinks it’s lazy”

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Meet Gemma and Jack. Jack believes that people who delegate certain tasks, like cleaning and laundry, are lazy. It’s one of his many strong opinions that’s causing a wedge in their relationship.  Recently, he refused to hire movers because it was a “waste of money.” As frustrating as they are, listen to the layers behind his financial opinions. They have a household income of $200k, but it’s not an even split. Throw in their individual cultural and gender codes, and it starts to make sense why they’re butting heads about penny decisions over who should pay the gas or do the laundry. They’re completely misaligned when it comes to the big vision.  We need to get them to connect over money. Let’s start there and build our way up.  Connect with Ramit Website Instagram Twitter Facebook YouTube Linkedin 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.

I know that what we can do together is more than what either of us can do individually. But also, I'm also a little bit of a rebel where I'm just like, I don't want to do those household things because I saw my mom do them and she wasn't happy about it. So when Gemma asks to be able to hire somebody to deliver groceries or clean the place. How does that strike you? I would rather die than pay somebody 50 hundred full three blocks. I'm Remi T. C. T. and this is the I will teach you to be rich podcast. How do you deal with money in a relationship if your partner refuses to spend it?

It's easy to feel resentful because suddenly your world has shrugged. You might have the money between the two of you, but your spending is gonna be determined by the lowest common denominator in your relationship. Your partner, who just might not want to spend money on certain things. Well, today I want to introduce you to Gemma and Jack. They're both 35, and Jack has really strong opinions about what they should not spend

money on. Like when they recently moved, Jack refused to hire movers, saying it was a waste of money. So he ended up spending his limited vacation time moving all their furniture three blocks away, consuming what could have been their time together. Gemma and Jack have an income of over $200,000 between them and their well-entracted become multi-millionaires. But Jack thinks people are lazy if they hire movers or if they live in a door man building. And he's a door man! Jema earns more than Jack does, raising fascinating gender and cultural questions,

which you'll hear in today's episode. They find themselves arguing over tiny issues, like who pays for gas, but they're ignoring the huge elephant in the room. And that is, they're completely financially misaligned when it comes to the big picture. Let's play a little game. I'm gonna list out something and you tell me if you would pay for it or not. Would you pay for a car? Absolutely. Okay. Would you pay for a nice restaurant?

Yes. Would you pay for somebody to do your laundry? No. Uh-huh. Would you pay for somebody to clean your apartment? So. Uh-huh. Would you pay for somebody to watch your daughter? Yes. What's the difference? Well, well, laundry, I think I could do that. Clean my apartment, I could do that. I think this is more for like, you know, I think this goes back to my childhood. These are things that I was able to do. And I've normalized it where I don't see the need why to pay for it.

Right. Because yeah, I don't... So I'm a really from West Africa. I'm from Ghana. I was born there and lived there for 18 years. And most part, you know, and I'm from a middle-class family. And we did have help, but, you know, we were still kind of like... It was very conservative, you know, culture where you like, you got a cleaner room, you got a clean lounge, you got to walk the dog, all those things, you got to wash your room, you got to clean the house, you got to walk the dog, all those things, you got to wash your own clothes by hand, essentially.

So for me, those things are very natural where I feel like, why pay someone to do that? Like it just, it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense, it baffles my mind when people want to pay other people to clean the house for them. I think it's crazy. Okay, hold on a second. Because I want you to answer your own questions just for a second.

Yeah. So you said, why pay somebody for that? Yeah. Let's take cleaning the house. Give me an answer to that question. Why would somebody pay somebody else to clean their house? Probably time. And because they can afford to. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. What else? Uh, probably say because they're lazy. Okay. That could be a reason. What else? Because I'm a door man. That's why I'm saying that.

But doesn't somebody pay you to watch the door? They do, and I think they're lazy. Yes. I'm very. Yes. That's very opinionated. That's very interesting. People who pay other people to do things are lazy. Did you catch that? Very, very interesting. First off, if you create an identity around doing things yourself, you will find it very difficult to change that identity as your wealth increases. This is why you hear stories about millionaires

who drive around town to find cheaper blueberries. American culture tends to glorify this as if they're staying true to their roots that never got too big for their riches. Personally, I think it's idiotic. Money should change you. And if you've earned enough to comfortably afford to pay for help. And searching for blueberries is not your rich life, well that's what money is for. Jack is placing a value judgment on

people who spend money to avoid doing chores. This is where my disparagement curiosity principle can come in handy. I call it the D to C principle. Instead of disparaging people by saying they're lazy, ask them, why might people actually be happy to pay for it, or have? When I lived in New York, I lived in a dormant building. I loved it.

Oftentimes, we can learn so much about how other people spend their money and what they value by just being curious. So let's go deeper. Jack has even more layers to his financial philosophy. Okay, so you grew up in Ghana. Yeah. You mentioned you had help. Was this like people around the house cleaning?

What was it? Yeah, it was people, well, it was people around the house, you know, primarily doing a cleaning and a cooking. Is that common for middle class family and Ghana? It is. It is very. It is. So like, you know, either like a family member or a friend of a family who's kids, you know, they bring from the village and they live in the house and then they provide the services. You call them a house help essentially. Yeah, so that's the situation that's yeah okay yeah I know what that's like my family in India has people in you know house that might help with cleaning or gardening or something like that okay so it's interesting to me that you grew up with that you grew up with that, you grew up with the culture of hiring people around the house. And yet

here, you're adamantly against paying somebody like a mover or a doorman. What is that? I never liked the idea of somebody almost feeling like they have to do something for you. You know, without always believe in very like an unopened channel. Like, hey, if you want to do it, you do it, but not to feel like if you don't do it, there's going to be repercussions. Like, I hate that. You hate that way. Well, naturally, I'm a rebel without a cause.

And Gemma will tell you that. But also, there's this idea that, Well, naturally I'm a rebel without a cause and Gemma will tell you that but but also Is this is this idea that I think you I think is just crime and punishment and assess and that's exact that's the way I was raised where it's like If you don't do it, we're not gonna feed you and I'm gonna take your review or you're not worth. Oh, you're not good enough Hmm, right. Don't do what if you don't if not good enough. Right? If you don't do what? If you don't, if you don't clean the house, if you don't do it longer,

if you don't take care of the kids, then what is your use? And it feels so utilitarian. Yeah, I agree. And I agree. I abhor that to my core. Okay. The irony is, if he moved to Ghana, he just admitted he would hire people to help around

the house. Now, whatever I hear, contradictions with someone's money philosophy, I know I've struggled. That's the chance to help them unpeel it, to really understand what's going on behind it. Usually, you'll find that we're following some decades old invisible script that we're not even aware of. Half the time your invisible scripts aren't serving you anymore. So I want to dig into his thoughts on money.

I started by asking what's changed for them. That's causing them to bring these issues up now. In the last couple of years, I mean, everything has changed. We had our daughter. We moved to a different location. I got a different job where I'm getting paid significantly more. What's the difference in salary before and now? The difference is about over $50,000 a year.

Okay. So what were you making at the past job? 89,000. Okay. And now you're making about 145 or so, right? Correct. Okay. That's a big jump. I don't know what that's going to look like. Okay. Well, congratulations. That's a huge jump. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I'm excited about it. We're so both kind of contributing similar amounts to the other fixed expenses of our households. How can that be if you make two or three times what

Jack makes? Well, we live within our means or below our means, I would say. And I think the extra stuff, some of the extra stuff, I tried to like contribute from my salary as much as possible. So like the vacations and things like that that seemed like extra stuff. We kind of had this joint expense system before our daughter was born. And we've just kind of mostly kept that similar.

This is how most people go through their life with money. They come up with a simple way of handling it. And then as circumstances change, they don't adjust their approach. A lot of you are still following the same principles of money you had at age 15. The way you think about vacations and clothes and paying for services and tipping or one ever is important to you.

Those should evolve as your financial situation does. You have to remember, it's not that people are consciously deciding to keep their accounts separate or to split their money unevenly. Most of the time, they just don't pay attention to it at all. Yeah. Okay, now we got to really get into this. So, to you, Jack, how does gender play a role with your finances? Traditional, you know, vertical, conservative background. You know, man goes out to earn the money, you know,

you know, mom or woman stays home and essentially, you know, will take care of the home or nurture the family environment. Our creates a safe space. And we even have this discussion, you know, this week, even from where I'm from, even if the mom goes out to work, he's still primarily in charge of keeping the home environment.

You know, kosher, you know, so I think that's the way for me, you know, money relates to gender and sex. Mm-hmm. So when Gemma asks to be able to hire somebody to deliver groceries or clean the place, how does that strike you? We can't afford that. So it makes it almost to be very cavalier with the money.

What if I told you you could afford it? Oh, no, I know we can Wait, no, no, no, no, I know we can I know we can I'm always doing the math in my head. I know we can But then I think again it goes back to my insecurity about it, right? It's her it's it's mostly her money Right, so I think it's very cavalier with it. Like, even though we have enough, and for me, it feels like it's not enough. But objectively, I know we have, you know, no more than the average person does.

But then it just... You recognize that what you feel is different than the objective numbers that you have in your bank account. Absolutely. That's a huge wall with disconnect. It creates a lot of stress. Gemma, tell me about the role of gender for you with finances. Yes. So similarly to Jack, I grew up also in a very conservative environment. So I'm Dominican. I also grew up in the DR. That's what I saw. Woman is home, taking care of the home.

But also, I think it's something different with my parents where they came from nothing. And they built what little they had their life as a middle class, you know, family together. So to me, yes, there's like this gender role and my mom did her duty to fulfill it, but I also saw both parents working together in partnership, a hundred percent aligned about money and their goals and their financial goals, building together.

I know that what we can do together is more than what either of us can do individually. But also like I'm also a little bit of a rebel where I'm just like I don't want to do those household things because I saw my mom do them and she wasn't happy about it. She did it because she that was her duty that's what she knew and I'm just like I'd rather pray some want to do it. I don't want to do it. Jack likes to cook, he's a great cook, he is such a good cook. And sometimes I'm just like, okay, I'll cook this chicken because I know you like to see me cook,

but it is nowhere better than the chicken that you would have cooked with less time, with less energy, with less thinking about it. I mean, I'm asking him, how should the oven be? What should I do? And the end result is nowhere near as good as what he would have done. But I'm also like, I want to do it to make you happy. I want to do it.

I do believe in feeding my family because of the joy of feeding my family. But when it becomes this duty, it just doesn't feel like it's worth it. It's just like, again, we have such limited time. We have different work schedules. There's just better ways feel like it's worth it. It's just like, I have, again, like we have such limited time. We have different work schedules. There's just better ways of spending it than fulfilling our gender roles. Or at least for me fulfilling that gender role

that I saw growing up. I spoke to Jack about what he thinks the solution is. And from his point of view, it's simple. Earn more money. He feels that if he earned more than double their current income, in other words, if they earned $450,000 a year, that their problems would be solved, he even tells me that he would finally feel peace if he earned that much. But then he quickly adds that he would have to earn it himself, not working a nine to five. Candidly, I'm not so sure that I believe.

One of my favorite things to talk about is this concept of money dials. The areas where you love to spend money. The most common one is food, the next most common one is travel, and the third most common one. A top money dial is health and wellness. Now I get it. I spend a lot on certain areas of my life. For me, I love hotels that falls under luxury. I love convenience that falls under having my food delivered, etc.

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I can't, I can't, we're going to run the clock and then expect us to clean the apartment. So the quality time is big for her. So I will have to say yes. Okay, that's actually pretty interesting, isn't it? So you two jointly make over $200,000. And right now, Jack, you've said there's no way I would hire someone to clean this apartment or move. But suddenly, if you were making 450, yeah, I would do that. What happened? What's the difference? Hmm, probably us making more, I think, I'm not certain.

There's something else too. I know, I know. That part of my brain is saying probably because I'm making the line here. That's right. Yeah. Tell me about that. I think it will be, it will be correlated to like, you know, a gender role.

You know, the man makes more use, able to provide take care. Probably will fill the last insecure about money. Yeah. If I'm able to make, you know, eight times or seven times more than what I make, and which it will equate to three times what Gemma makes, I think it, in a sense, not in a sense, it would take that insecurity about money in my part. Yeah. No, that's what I feel like.

I think that's really perceptive of you. I think if you were to make that much money, whether it be two, that's what I feel right. I think that's really perceptive of you. I Think if you were to make that much money whether be two three times what Gemma made what I just heard from you is You would be able to afford to be generous Am I hearing that right? Actually, yeah Afford to be generous with the thing that's important to Gemma. Afford to be generous, paying somebody to do XYZ that you need done. You don't want to spend your limited time on it.

Afford to be generous. Yeah. Kind of arguing and staying in our own corners about our beliefs. Yeah, yeah. You both got in the ring. You both put on your helmet and you started jabbing each other and you already knew what the other person was going to say, didn't you? He's going to say that I can do this myself and she's going to say that you got the quality time and jab, jab, jab. And then you went back into your corners and you crossed your arms and say, not them.

And nothing changed, did it? That strategy doesn't work. You're asking $3 questions. Really, we want to be asking, in your case, $300,000 questions. Making $210,000 a year, you have, oh my God, you have almost $400,000 in savings and investments. That's pretty good.

35 years old, how do you feel about that? Shema? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, the gem is hard work. You know, I'm associated with it by proxy. It's not my hard work. Mm, what is it?

So I don't believe in hard work. I try to, the most possible to do the least amount of work to get the results that I want. You believe in hard work, you're very hard working. Yeah. Okay, okay, hold on, hold on. Interesting philosophy. And we can talk about that another time. But, Gemma, did you hear what Jack said? What is he really saying right there? He said, that's Gemma's hard work. Now, you chose to focus on the hard work part of it.

Yeah. What's that other word in that sentence? It's mine. Yeah. And so, what is he really saying when he just responded like that? Well, he doesn't see himself as part of it. He just thinks that it's just for me. It's just part of, you know, again, he's not. Yeah, he doesn't see himself as part of it. The two of you are disconnected. And I don't think you're really tackling that.

Instead, what are you spending most of your time discussing when it comes to money? Who's spend what? Like you said, who needs to fill up the car with gas? How much money we spend on groceries this month? Yeah. Yeah, pennies. Penies. Yeah. Yeah, pennies. Penies, yeah. Rounding errors.

Yeah. Okay, good. So so far, we're starting to get a grasp of the problem. We don't yet have a solution. That's okay. We got plenty of time, but we're starting to understand the problem. And I can see that this can compound over time.

The two of you fight over $1,500 moving today and tomorrow you fight over $60,000 for your daughter's college. And then what happens the day after that, you fight over what are you going to do in retirement? Not a happy place to be. It's a place place too many Americans are in. And then one day they look over at this person, they say, I hate this person. And it didn't have to be that way. You actually have very good incomes.

You had the opportunity to do something totally different. That's what I want to know about. I want to know about your vision for your rich life together and independently. So who wants to go first? Who wants to paint the picture for me? What is your rich life? Hmm. Well, I've thought about this for quite some time. Jack wasn't kidding when he says he's been thinking about this. He spent the next 10 minutes relaying his vision to me. Here are some of the highlights.

Buy a house, buy the lake somewhere in the woods. I don't know how to swim, but there's something about the water that keeps me close. I want to boat. I want to be working at something for myself, buy myself for something that I enjoy doing. I wouldn't see this work. I also want to be able to provide great opportunities

for our daughter. And I mentioned, good schools and being able to spend more quality time with her. Now, Gemma, what's your rich life? I love the idea of a lake house. I want to be in your nature, but I also want to be in your community and family. I want to have more children.

And I want that village support as we raise them that we're not doing it alone, that we have help, that things, I want things to feel easy and just just carry carry ourselves through life with ease and joy. Well, when I hear Jack talk about his rich life, I think he's holding back a little bit. I don't know. I have to. No, I don't I don't want you to hold back. What's an example of what you're holding back on? So I want to make a billion dollars, right? And yeah, that's a reaction of it's yeah. So that's a reaction I always get when I'm like, you know, by 50, I want to be a billionaire. She's just, there's always a reaction and,

well, for better or for worse, my track record is I started businesses have not been great. So always seems like a pipe dream and I'm a dream I like to shoot for the moon. Like I like to just be far out there. And, you know, when I get those responses from I feel like it grounds me and I could be wrong. And that could be holding me back. Have you ever asked her why she reacts like that? No, ask her. Why do you react like that, honey?

There's two things that come to my mind and it's... Okay. I am very grounded, so I mean, immediately like... So what's the project plan for that? That's one one aspect of like, you know, where I'm like, let's work on the plan then. And then the other part of me is just like, do we need that? Like, it almost feels like we can't be happy until we have that. Like there's happiness is out there in this dream

and it's just like, but what if my fear is like, you're never gonna let yourself to be happy if you don't reach that dream. And I just, I think life can pass us by if you do that and it scares me. I just, I think life can pass us by if you do that. And it scares me. Oh. Kind of interesting what you learn when you ask your partner about their beliefs, isn't it?

Yeah. I have to tell you, it's a little hard for me to relate to someone who wants a billion dollars. I actually find it a little delusional. I think it's a method of self-handy capping, which goes like this. I want a billion dollars to be successful. So until I have that, I'm going to keep hustling. Someone who sets goals like this with no basis in reality. Isn't really serious. And frankly, if you're making

$200,000 a year like Gemma and Jack R, you could radically change your lifestyle by doubling your salary. You don't need $50 million, much less $1 billion. I have to tell you, I hate to see people creating these made up goals and then telling themselves in their partner, they're not going to be happy until they finally get it. That's a recipe for being unhappy for the rest of your lives. Unfortunately, I've learned that you can't simply tell people their ideas are delusional. So instead, watch how I chase their perspective. So I recommend a different strategy. I'm going to recommend that we get super specific on a weekly basis and we talk about what your joint rich life looks like on a given week.

So imagine you have a calendar in front of you, Sunday through Saturday. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let's paint a picture. What does our rich life look like this week? And let's be realistic. You both have your jobs, you have your daughter.

Okay. This is like two weeks from now. How about Sunday morning? Let's start there. Sunday morning, I wake up early. It's now 6 o'clock. Gemma doesn't wake up till a 39 and you know, the baby wakes it's now 6 o'clock. Jema doesn't wake up till 8.39 and the baby wakes up like 8 o'clock. So we have about three hours.

What do you guys want to do with it? Is the cliche to say quality time? No, it's not cliche, but what does that mean for you? Family breakfast. Is this at home or is this at a restaurant? Somebody making it for us. So I'll say a restaurant. Okay. Alright, so the rich life I've heard so far is you wake up, you go into a restaurant, family breakfast, nice time, and then Jack you're off to work. Yeah.

Okay, Jemma, you want to add anything to that? Sounds great to me. All right, beautiful. And walk me through the rest of the week. Give me a couple of the highlights for your rich life on this given week. Hmm, Thursday night. I think we need to do something Thursday evening. Maybe we do something together since he's off Friday, so that could be a good day to

Maybe go out to dinner or or just Do something together at home, but just being more intentional about doing something fun together Let's be intentional right now. Let's not kick it to the future. Again, this is a given week What do you want to do? Like Jim said, just a game night, right? From Thursday nights? Yeah, we can invite some friends or family over and do like a game night.

Mm-hmm. Beautiful. All right, what else for the rest of the week? You still got till Saturday night? What day night on Saturday nights? Well, we've been knowing our our quarter, or I like that. Fridays. Ooh.

Fridays, Friday, Friday, Friday. I think for now, objectively, we might be limited to Sunday, morning, Thursday nights and maybe with Saturday nights. That sounds like a lot to me. Yeah, that sounds great. Two to three nights a week, some activity, whether it be, you know, going to brunch or having some friends over,

that sounds awesome. Realistic, sounds gratifying. Hey, you know what's funny? Who? And all that time I never heard any of you saying my rich life is doing my laundry on Wednesday nights. Huh? How come nobody talked about buying 18 ounces of Windex and cleaning those

windows behind you? Nobody's mentioning that. And you didn't mention all this other stuff about sorting the whites and this and that. How come? Well, I don't think we sort our whites because you do it all together, but yeah, I get the point.

Yeah. So in order to live this really crisp vision that YouTube created, Sundays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I love that. You might have to make some changes with how other things get done. Now, if the two of you were making $25,000 a year total, this would be a different conversation. I might

ask you how you're going to afford going out two, three times a week. You two are making 10 times that. So you can easily go out to lunch. You can easily go out for date night. But you can't easily do your laundry and grocery shopping and cooking and cleaning. What is this making anybody think? Am I the only one here? We lost one train of thoughts. Let me say it again, Jack. That's okay.

That's okay. We're going to take this step by step. This is very important moment. So you have the money to go off for date nights and brunch that rich life. You may not have the time to do all the other things that you need to do to keep your household running, which include cooking, cleaning, grocery delivery, shopping, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

What do you think the conclusion is of that? We might need to outsource some of that. Oh, there it is. We've gone completely full circle here. Do you see it? Jack started off by saying, I would never pay for this. I would never do that.

That's a waste of money. And suddenly, he now realizes we might need to outsource. So do you see how we got here? It involves asking people, tell me about yourself. Let's do an audit. How did you grow up? Then it involves patiently creating that rich life vision. And then it involves unpeeling some of these invisible scripts that you have. These ideas that we should not outsource anything

because it's a waste of money. Well, that's not compatible with your vision of a rich life. So what do you want to do? You want to change your old stories or do you want to change you rich life? That's how we do it. What would be an easy one to outsource? What would be the easiest? London Rick You guys live in New York laundry is easy and cheap Don't cheat Jack. We already kind of outsource laundry. We do we do that's why I was it That's why was it easiest Come That's why it was the easiest. Hey, come on.

You're only cheating yourselves. Okay. Well, it's just a wild idea, but I'm cooking. Keep going. Yeah, that's for me, I think, yeah. We're cooking. We'll be somebody to mill prep. Well, I love to eat.

So, and. All right. So this is a great conversation for the two of you to have at your next date night, okay? Or you can do it whenever. You kind of say, hey, you know, Jack says, you know, I think it'd be kind of nice to do this. And then Gemma, who's a little bit more grounded in the numbers, her response might be Gemma.

I think that that sounds good. We can afford it. Okay. How do you know you can afford it? How do I know I can afford it? Because we've done the math. Have you already? We have it. Sarah Lee, we'll look into the, I'll probably, I'll probably look into a few services, see what they offer,

what they call. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. This is a great opportunity. This is a great opportunity for the two of you to row in the same direction together. Okay. Okay, remember, Gemma, Jack, what did he say earlier? He said, that's Gemma's money. Remember, what was he really saying when he said that?

Well, essentially that, that I was the only one who was making it or. Yeah, and that he didn't feel connected. Okay. So this is an opportunity for the two of you to get connected about this decision. So in the past, what would have happened was, Gemma, you would have gone back to your corner and I bet you did this with the movers too. You would have looked up how much it cost to move. And then you would have come to him with a big sledgehammer and said, $1,500, let's do it.

And then he goes back to his corner, crosses his arm, say, I'm not gonna spend that kind of money, I'll take it myself, it's only three blocks. Any of this self familiar? Yeah, very, very familiar. First of all, Jack now has a vision for your rich life week, which I kind of love. Hey, meal prep, that would be cool.

Now, the two of you are both on the same page. Okay, maybe you even write it down. And then the two of you can go off in different directions here. Gemma, you could say, Hey, why don't we both take a look and see if we can find some meal prep services, then we'll come back and compare what we found.

And of course, now you want to talk about money. So the way you can do that is to say, okay, here's how much we make. Every month, I think we can afford this, or I think we can afford three days of meal prep. But Jack, I want you to go through this too. And let's talk about it. How do you think that conversation would change things from the type of conversations you both used to have? Those are more inclusive. I think that's a starting point. But not only inclusive, I think it creates a sense of cooperation. It's teamwork, essentially, teamwork. You know, we both use an ass-trans, you know, the person who's gonna research in a small ground of their money and the idea is guy and

bouncing each other's strength off each other. Gemma, what about you? Yeah, I think that that might actually work a lot more than the conversations we're used to having. And I like it that is grounded on, it starts with the vision, right? It doesn't start with the numbers, it doesn't start with the practical, which I think is where I might have started initially, but it starts with like our, our greater purpose together vision that we set up. So money becomes not the center of the conversation,

but a tool to help us get the vision. That's right. Money is the fuel that allows you to reach your rich life. Right. And the rich life you started out is so compact and concise. It's just Sunday through Saturday. You're not asking for a G5. You're not asking to go to Tahiti every Saturday. It's really Sunday through Saturday. You're not asking for a G5. You're not asking to go to Tahiti every Saturday.

It's really quite simple. I like that. It's training wheels. The two of you get to practice things like, oh, meal prep, or you know what? Gemma, I know you really want to hire somebody to come in and clean, but this is one of those things that I just enjoy doing, so I'm going to do it on my own, right? You get to have those conversations and navigate those. I want to emphasize that you don't always have to agree. You really don't. That's important to know. My wife and I don't always agree on how we spend our money.

We do come up with some general values that are important to us. Once you feel great, let's say you've done four weeks of this. You've gone to the outdoor dining and you have the game night. And you're both like, okay, we got it. We got the food prep. Let's think a little bigger now. Now, you go from a week, what's the next level that you could work towards in your rich life?

Take it even smaller. From month. A month. Yeah. Because I bet you do something different on a monthly basis than you do on a weekly basis, right? What's an example of something that you might do once a month?

Visiting family? Bingo. Something like that. So you go, okay, once a month. Visiting family? Bingo. Something like that. So you go, okay, once a month, we're going to visit our family. That's going to happen on a Saturday or a Sunday. So let's put that in the calendar. Okay, now what do we need to do in order to do that? Well, I'll be taking the train.

Are we driving? Are we taking the nubber? You start to really think about that. Soon enough, you guys have a dialed in one year vision, five year, even 10 year vision. And when you do that, now you can start having these beautiful conversations about things like, you know, what percentage are we contributing

to our investments? You know, hey, like, how much do we want to save? You know what, I think we should spend on a vacation. That's in our plan. We should put some money aside for that. And money becomes the trailing part of the conversation. Okay. You two have earned the privilege to do it that way. Most people have to think about cost first. You two are high earners as a household. So you get to start with the vision. And that is just a real privilege for a lot of people. So I think that YouTube should recognize

how amazing of a situation both of you are in. I'm really proud of Gemma and Jack for having this conversation. You know, they came in, you're talking about fighting over who spends money on gas, but as always on this podcast, it is rarely about that. It's actually so much bigger than that. Jemma and Jack learned that they have different ways of looking at money.

They were honest about the gender and cultural rules that they both bring to the table. They also started to finally create their vision of a rich life. And you'll notice that in this podcast, there are certain things that they told me. I just ignore them. Okay, you want to have a billion dollars? That's great. Why don't you start by making fifty thousand dollars more. That's a good start. I'm not even going to engage with the billion-dollar point. Instead, I want to go much more specific. And what I did was I said, tell me about your

Rich Life vision for a single week. That is a manageable amount of time that people can understand and comprehend. So sometimes we think about the big, rich life concepts. What I want to accomplish in the next 10 years. What about retirement? All that's great. But sometimes we need to just narrow it down to one week. What do I want to do on my rich life's Sunday? What does our weekend look like?

What about midweek? What does that look like? What does that feel like to us? And when I did that here with Jemma and Jack, you could see that it all finally clicked for them. This is my wish for you that as you create your rich life vision and you listen to all these episodes of the I will teach Birich podcasts, you start to think, what is my rich life week look? What does my rich life month look like? And eventually, what is the rest of my rich life week look? What is my rich life month look like? And eventually what is the rest of my rich life look like? Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I'm Remi Tseati. 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. rich system into your personal finances.