I Will Teach You To Be Rich - 55. “My top 5 lessons from one year of interviewing couples about money”

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Personal finance can seem complicated, but most issues are linked back to two core influences—how people think and feel about money. Where they land on those scales has a wide range of possible manifestations (skimping on frozen berries, anyone?).  One year into the podcast, and a handful of these themes have become very clear. Tune in to this special solo episode as Ramit breaks them down. Check out the free resources below if any of these scenarios sound familiar to you—or you’re just ready to deepen your understanding of money and what it can do for you. Programs & Resources iwt.com/moneymindset → Money Mindset Mini Course iwt.com/guiltfree → Conscious Spending Plan iwt.com/nomorefights → Guide to How to Talk to Your Partner about Money iwt.com/house → Ramit's 3 step guide to buying a house iwt.com/therichlife → Rich Life mini course  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.

When I told him how much I spent, he got really upset. For me to just go and drop like $250 at Target was kind of a big deal. I honestly felt a little bit taken advantage of. I initially didn't immediately voice my displeasure, but I think it was really obvious that I was upset. We kind of just got in a huge fight and Mike had basically had said something along the lines of he makes more money than me, so if anybody's going to be spying that money, it should be him.

I just remember just feeling like small and... Okay. Tammy. Who? I noticed you're crying. feeling like small and... Okay. Tammy. Hmm. I noticed you're crying. Mm-hmm. Can you tell me why?

Um... I just think that it's really important to us to... not recreate some of what we experience as children. Welcome to the I Will Teach You to Be Rich Podcast. Today's episode is going to be a little different because it's been one year since we launched this podcast. In that time, I've spoken to over 50 couples and we've had over three million downloads. I wanna thank you for your support. I wanna thank you for listening

and I wanna take you behind the scenes of some of my favorite episodes. In fact, today I wanna share with you the top five lessons I've learned from speaking to couples about money over the last year. And we're going to do this countdown style. My goal is to address some of the most common issues I've seen so that you can walk away

with some techniques and some tools for talking about money in a healthier way. Now, just to remind you, the reason that I started this podcast was that when my wife and I were talking about a prenup, we wished there was something we could listen to so we could hear how other couples did it. And it got difficult. And I figured if it's hard for me, and I know money, it's what I do for a living.

Wow, it must be hard for everyone to talk about money. One of the things you learn over the last 50 plus episodes is that there's a difference between how much you have in the bank and how you feel about money. We tend to overvalue math in personal finance and we undervalue psychology. That's why it's been a gift to be able to bring real couples onto the I will teach You to Be Rich podcast

and talk to them about how they disagree about money. Some of them have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Some of them have over 10 million dollars in net worth. But all of them need a different way to think about money, to talk about money, even to feel about money. So let's get into it. And as always, thank you for listening. Lesson number five is stop saying, you're bad at money.

This is what I call an invisible script. It's a belief we have so deeply held that we don't even realize it. It's invisible to us. And this idea that I'm bad with money, I'm just not good with numbers. It's one of those phrases you hear people throw around casually. But I believe it's actually extremely harmful. When you say you're bad with money, it starts to become part of your identity, which makes it very hard to change. And the truth is, it's not true. Managing

your money is a skill that you can learn. And so the more we repeat that phrase, I'm not good with money, I'm bad with money. The more we actually start to believe it. Now, Elizabeth, from episode 13, might have been the hardest on herself. Listen to it. What were the words you used to describe yourself and money in the first five minutes of us talking? Like horrible and dumb, stupid, disgusting.

Yeah. So, how do you think you using those labels for yourself affects the way that you behave with money? It feels really bad. Those are strong words that I describe that. And I like, and I think that's like my problem to you. Like I, I know that I have those characteristics about it, but I've tried to throw them in the closet and pretend they're not there until it comes up. Okay. So how can you say you are stupid to yourself? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that's just like making me like why I want to make myself feel that, you know, to push through

that I am maybe making, you know, horrible decisions with money. Maybe it's like a wake up call. Does it work? No. No, it doesn't. So, but I'm I am curious, what do you get out of it? Because you do get something out of calling yourself dumb, stupid, and horrible. What is it?

I mean, definitely not gratification. I don't even know why I do it. I think you may get an excuse not to engage in money conversations with us. That is true. I guess I do say like when I am faced with that conversation, I do say, I'm dumb. I don't understand what you're saying. Wow. Stupid, disgusting, horrible dumb. These are strong words. I'm willing to bet she would never talk to a friend like this. So why does she talk to herself like this?

No, really, I'm not asking that rhetorically. If you have a pattern with money, I'm going to challenge you right now to put on your scientist glasses and ask yourself, what am I getting out of this? What am I getting out of avoiding money? What am I getting out of getting in a fight every time we talk about money? In Elizabeth's case, one thing she gets out of calling herself stupid is that she gets to escape having to actually learn about money. What if we reframed her frustration? Instead of saying, I'm stupid with money. What if she said, I haven't learned the skills of money yet, but I know I can. This is the kind of mindset you can change.

You can become good with money. I know that for a fact, I have seen millions of people do it. You can become disciplined. You can even become a morning person. Imagine, if you could take the most frustrating part of your life and change the way you talk about yourself and actually get amazing results. We put together a little bonus that's going to help you do that. It's going to help you identify and rewrite those invisible scripts you have around money.

And in less than an hour, you're going to change the way that you think about money and the way you talk about money. You can get access to that free mini-course at iwt.com slash money mindset. Lesson number four is spend more guilt-free. This is a common pattern that you've heard with the couples on this podcast, which is couples that actually have plenty of money, but they are terrified to spend it. And they agonize over $3 questions instead of seeing the big picture. My question is, what's the point of working hard to make all this money just to put it in an account and never

spend it. The point of this is not to be Scrooge McDuck and yet so many people do that. They refuse to turn the page of their rich life and realize, okay, we set a goal. We were in the accumulation phase in our 20s, 30s, 40s. We made it. We invested. We did well. Now we have to learn a new skill.

We have to hone the skill of spending extravagantly on the things we love. But almost nobody is talking about that. It's one of the reasons that I wanted to start this podcast. Listen to this very peculiar example that rich people cannot seem to get over. First, we start with organic strawberries. Some frozen organic strawberries that I remembered from Whole Foods are like $7.99 and they're like $15. And I was just like, I can't do it. I cannot pay $15 because what? It's crazy. Payment. You can't.

Because what? It's crazy. Like that is $7. I can't bring myself to pay two times the price for the exact same thing. What is your net worth? About $8 million. And then it's blueberries from the dollar store.

You got a $10 million net worth. You walk into the dollar store. What are you getting in the dollar store. You got a $10 million net worth. You walk into the dollar store. What are you getting in the dollar store, by the way? So the thing where I find a good value in the dollar store is light bulbs, batteries, and frozen fruit for my smooths. When I comparison, I'm here to shop that at Whole Foods, it's almost 2X. I just have to make a guess. Is it blueberries that you're buying at the dollar store? Man, what is it about rich people in blueberries? Do you know how many rich people I've talked to?

They'll not pay more for blueberries. This is crazy. All right, we're going to have to get into that another time, but there's something going cosmic going on here. And another one, what is it about berries? Listen to this. We literally cut out like fresh berries, because berries either don't eat them

or they go bad or they're expensive to start. Again, we're gonna buy organic berries so you're already paying a preview for it. So we try to look at like that. It's what are the big ticket items that we can get rid of. Greg, you make $270,000 a year and you drive to different stores to find cheaper blueberries. I'm not, listen, I'm not going out of my,

this I didn't say those things. I don't know, like, shake in your head. No, it's not true. It's annoying. How much money do you make an hour? And how much time are you spending trying to save $2? Doesn't make sense. He's cheap.

It's funny, but as you heard from Ashley and Greg in episode two, it can also turn personal very quickly. One solution is to create a worry-free number. What this means is it's a number below which you're simply not gonna worry about it. Like when you're a teenager buying a pack of gum, no big deal, or even in your 20s, you know, getting a coffee, whatever it is,

you didn't really worry about it. It was three bucks here, four bucks there. But as your income increases and your net worth increases, your worry free numbers should increase too. If you have $300,000 a year and you're still agonizing over a $10 purchase, that's a problem. And the solution is not to beat yourself up and say, oh my gosh, I really need to get things

in order, I need to do better. No, it's to simply create some rules. Here's a number below which I'm not gonna worry. It is my worry free number. And as your wealth grows, your worry free number should grow as well. Now a lot of people have this problem. They feel guilty spending and they have all these peculiar things about blueberries or

all these weird things that they just cannot seem to get past. To fix this, you can use a conscious spending plan. It breaks your spending down into four categories. Listen to this. Fix costs, saving, investing, and guilt-free spending. Did you hear that last part? Guilt-free spending. You can use the conscious spending plan to determine your guilt-free spending number. So it might be $200 a month. It might be $10,000 a month. Depending on your

income and your spending, you will have a number. And every month, you have to spend that money. I said have to because you're already you have to spend that money. I said have to because you're already saving, you're already investing and you get to spend it every month on blueberries eating out cosmetics, coats, trips with your kids, whatever you want. Go to iwt.com slash guilt free to download your copy of the conscious spending plan and you're gonna see exactly how much

you can spend every month guilt-free. That's iwt.com slash guilt-free. Okay, now onto lesson number three. Lesson number three, beware of money propaganda. There are many, money myths and lies out there that you need to beware of. For example, a lot of people say, I don't wanna invest, it feels like gambling to me.

It's too risky. You know what's risky? Is that you're definitely gonna run out of money? Soon, you just don't know it yet. I don't even wanna get into that. The number one most common myth about money. It's almost religious, especially for Americans, is that if you rent, you are throwing money away.

And accordingly, buying a house is always the best investment. That's why lesson three is beware of money propaganda. Specifically, the propaganda around real estate can be extremely harmful, because it tells people to make the biggest financial decision of their lives without even running the numbers. That's what's so crazy to me when I suggest that you should run the numbers before the biggest purchase of your life. People get angry. Go look at any social media posts where I've talked about it. Literally go to my Instagram or my Twitter and look at anywhere where I talk about renting versus owning. There are hundreds, sometimes thousands

of people angrily protesting against me. When in reality, my message is simple. Run the numbers. For me, living in cities like San Francisco, New York, or LA, it actually makes no financial sense to buy. I make way more money renting, but this is so counter-culture, so against the propaganda messages that people get angry. Listen to this example from a recent two-part conversation with Eric and Elena, who had bought into this idea that they had to buy.

There were a few factors for its purchasing a condo. Honestly, my parents were not excited that we were renting, paying some of the else's mortgage. We lived in a place which is a bunch of young adults trying to pay rent, and there's always signs there of new builds coming in this area. Purchase now, low 500s, low 800s, it kind of gets to you. What is the implication when you see it, what do you think? We think we can afford it.

We see it so easy to look at the sign. If we're the demographic that the sign is meant for, then why would we not look into the opportunity? My best friends, parents are real estate agents. They're very big proponents of purchasing a place. And I agreed with them. I think I still agree with them. What did they say?

Mm-hmm. She, she, it's impossible to place someone's mortgage. I guess it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. It's outrageous to pay someone's mortgage. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Outrageous. Who else? We had friends that recently purchased a pre-construction. They said, if you had the money for a down payment,

you might as well purchase something instead of paying rent. We thought it would be a forced way to save money. Because we thought, you know, we're going to take this and then we're gonna save because of this. And we just felt like it was kind of now or never. Condo prices were going up and we found this one condo we were absolutely in love with for the right price. And we needed, you know, we didn't want to keep paying rent, paying somebody else's mortgage. We figured if we had the down payment, the mortgage itself wouldn't be that much different from our rents.

I just have a question for you, Elena, when was the last time you ate at a restaurant? Yesterday. Okay, don't look guilty. I don't mind that you ate at a restaurant. What restaurant was it? Like what type of food? It was like an awi-kuni-sushi. So how much did this sushi meal cost you? It costed me $60 after tip. You think that I'm gonna come down on you for paying $60 for sushi, don't you, Elena?

Yes. I'm not. I don't care how much she's been on your sushi, okay? But I just have one question for you. Didn't you feel terrible that you were paying the sushi owner's mortgage? Whoa. Wow.

So I want to describe what's happening right now. Elena is literally rotating, looking left and right. She looks completely in disbelief. Eric has his hand over his mouth and he's looking up at the sky like, I literally, and now he's rubbing his forehead like holy shit. The two of you look completely bewildered right now. Alaina, talk to me. I never thought about it like that at all.

That's crazy. It's true. It's true. How are they paying for the rents for the restaurant? If it's not me coming with my five girlfriends to pay $60 these for the sushi, I never thought about it like that. Don't you feel guilty? Don't you feel horrible that you paid their mortgage?

No? For them? No. No, why so? So why would I feel guilty when rent thing and paying someone else's mortgage if I'm more than willing to go to a sushi restaurant? I encourage you to use this logic the next time you hear someone complaining about paying their landlords mortgage.

Now for Eric and Elena, it wasn't so much the mortgage payment that was the issue. What they weren't prepared for was the maintenance, the repair, the HOA costs, and all of the other phantom costs associated with owning. Now, when you watch Realtors on TikTok dancing around in a field and telling you, this is how you build equity, They rarely acknowledge the actual numbers. I never saw a TikTok or talk about an amortization schedule, but if you're about to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on a purchase,

you damn well better know what amortization is. So here's my guideline. When I travel in state of hotel, I add 50% to the sticker price of the hotel to account for taxes, dining, and any other fees I might incur. For example, a $500 a night hotel actually becomes $750 a night, and that turns out to be eerily accurate when you factor in all the phantom costs for just one night at a hotel. Guess what? I use that

same calculation for mortgages to be conservative. In my calculations, when I factor in all phantom costs, as well as somebody to come and clean outside and somebody to come and do XYZ and a roof repair, that's gonna cost $18,000, eight years from now, I find essentially the same numbers. In other words, if a mortgage is $3,000 a month, I actually calculate it to cost roughly $4,500 per month.

Now you can run your own numbers. You can make your own assumptions. You're probably not going to hire as many staff members as I might. But the amount you pay is going to be dramatically higher than this sticker price, and you better factor that in. So this is all about money myths and how to overcome them. Money myths can be hard to identify because they're so ingrained in us, but there are ways to make sure that you are not making the biggest decision of your financial life based on propaganda. I put together a three-step guide to help you determine

if buying a house is right for you. And if it is, to run the numbers. Remember, it's the biggest decision you will ever make financially. So use this guide to make sure you get it right. You can get it from iwt.com slash house. That's iwt.com slash house. Lesson number two is for everyone who has a partner that just does not want to talk about money. They don't want to participate, and if you try to bring it up, it always ends in a fight.

Look in order to be successful, both of you have to be involved with your money. Managing your money is not like taking out the trash or doing the dishes. That you can delegate to one person. But money cuts across everything. It's like parenting. It affects everything. If there are two partners involved, they've got to be talking about it constantly. And with money, it affects everything from where you live,

what kind of food you eat, how you live, who's involved in your life, it's everything. So both people must be involved. And in the 50 plus couples that I've talked to, I see this pattern over and over again. One person is the money person and the other person tends to be completely involved. This causes huge problems. Let me give you an example of Jeff and Lisa from episode 52.

They recently came into a $1.2 million settlement and he still doesn't want to talk about money. What's so ever? doesn't want to talk about money whatsoever. I get a lot of questions from people who have used my book. They've automated their finances. They've set their investments up. They go, all right, I did the basics. What's next? And when you've made a lot of money,

you'll notice that there's not a lot of advice specifically for you. The blog posts that are typically focused around people who are just starting off or even people in debt do not really apply to you anymore. And it can also be embarrassing to ask. You can't really post about certain topics when you have money because your friends don't know

how much you make and nobody really wants to hear about how do I take cooler vacations or what do you all do for tax optimization? Because the first response is, oh, rich people problems. I don't like that phrase because rich people problems are problems nonetheless. How are you supposed to find someone you trust, whether it's an accountant or a travel advisor? The usual advice that you find on Google doesn't really apply at a certain level. So if you've made a big jump in income or net worth and you wish you had a community

of people who just get it, I want to introduce you to today's sponsor Long Angle. The Long Angle community is composed of high net worth individuals with diverse backgrounds in technology, finance, medicine, real estate, law, manufacturing, sports, media, and more. I'm a member of this community. There are so many interesting members of the community and the majority of them are first-generation wealth. They're young, highly successful individuals and they join the community to share knowledge and learn from each other, to get confidential, unbiased support, knowledge, sharing, and networking. And you can do it online through their digital platform, as well as face-to-face connections at their long, angle, in-person events.

Now, members also have access to unique private market opportunities. And as I mentioned, I'm a member of long angle. I like it because it's vetted. Everyone on there has a certain amount of net worth. And therefore, they are asking relevant questions of the community. You're not going to get people on there giving the same old advice like, Hey, here's how you save money on salary. That's not the purpose of this community. Some of the

topics that I've loved are multi generational family trips or questions like, we want to travel for six months with our children. What do you all do for school? How do you make travel more seamless for children? I've seen topics I loved about concierge doctors. Topics that no one is really talking about publicly. And on their online community, there are groups for all different topics like education for kids, events, even philanthropy, and how to become more thoughtful about giving.

There are literally thousands of conversations going on right now at Long Angle, and I love it because it's a super high-quality group, and people are even starting to meet in person. Now in order to join, members must show proof of at least $2.2 million in investible assets, liquid or illiquid, and a community organizer will hold a brief Zoom call with every potential member to make sure it's a fit. Go to longangle.com to learn more. That's longangleanggle.com. One of my money dials is generosity. For example, I love tipping big, I love buying gifts and experiences for my family.

And recently, I bought my parents a subscription to DeleteMe, this episode's sponsor. DeleteMe is a subscription service that will remove your personal information that's being sold online. If you've ever Googled your name, you'll notice tons of search results with your personal information that's being sold online. If you've ever Googled your name, you'll notice tons of search results with your personal information being shared online. That's not okay. It's not okay for you.

It's definitely not okay for your family, including your parents. Now, delete me will remove it all. Your name, address, phone number, all of it. It automatically works in the background to scan and delete your personal information from over 30 data brokers But they'll do customer quests on over 580 data brokers total The thing is identity theft is a real issue an estimated 15 million Americans had their identity stolen in

2021 we've had a number of people on this very show who were victims of identity theft and often it put them into tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt and it ruined their credit. That's why I find delete me so valuable. It's a service that I personally use and I love it. They reviewed over 4,600 listings for me and removed dozens of pieces of personal information. I knew it would be important to protect my parents too, but I also knew that they probably wouldn't sign up themselves, so I just got it for them. So if generosity is one of your money dials, great. If you care about your parents at all,

if you have ever given them a hug, just sign them up. You know they aren't gonna do it for themselves, but you also know that they probably need it. So if you want to get your personal information and the personal information of your loved ones removed from search results on the web, go to joindeleteme.com slash remeat for 20% off a plan for you or your entire family. That's joindeleteme.com slash remeat R-A-M-I-T for 20% off. Lisa, how would you describe the way that Jeff interacts with your personal finances.

He is mostly hands-off. Day to day, he often just says it's my money and he hands his paycheck over to me. And it seems legitimately fine with that unless there is something that he wants to purchase. And then so some he will make comments that I control the money and he doesn't want to ask permission for like large purchases. This is tough to admit, but let's be honest. I hide purchases from it. And it's for the sole purpose that I don't really have to discuss the purchase with her. I will try to bring something up and he will aggressively tell me no. And he will shut me down and turn away.

And I will be like, okay, I don't know if I agree with that. That is totally true. I usually make jokes. I usually tell you, hey, whatever you want goes. I get out of that conversation as fast as I can. She feels a sense loneliness, a loneliness. She made a comment a couple of weeks ago that if she screws up with any of this, she's afraid I'm going to give her all of the blame.

And I can't say that she's wrong. I mean, I would love to say she's absolutely wrong, but I have absolved myself of any responsibility of making a mistake. It's somewhat disheartening and sort of kills the dream of, it leaves me like, well, what should I do? Like, I think this is gonna be great for us. And he doesn't wanna to talk about it.

I've always counted her money as her money and my money is her money. I think that's a cute phrase, but I actually don't think that's doing you any favors. It's not doing many favors, but it's also true. So it's the same with the settlement. And I find it, it's like really greats on me that he's like, that's not that's your money. That's your money. That's your money. And I'm like, no, it isn't, it's it's ours. I get out of that conversation as fast as I can. I hide behind this kind of crap sometimes. The reality is one of the things about Lisa here is she will endure worse than I can dish out.

She has endured worse than I can dish out. She has endured worse than I can dish out. I don't take advantage of it, but at the same time I don't hide for, I mean, it's a fact of our life that I can make some jokes and I can have some fun with the fact that she's running our finances and even if it's a big problem for her for the most part, I know she's not coming at me about it. Yeah. So I'm definitely kind of taking advantage of that. But I wouldn't say I do it intentionally. It's just convenient. If that makes sense, I'm not purposely trying to take advantage of her, but it is certainly convenient that I don't have to worry about her coming at me about it. Well, that's interesting. You said, I'm not taking, I don't take advantage of her. And then five seconds, I do say, I'm kind of taking advantage of that. Jeff tried to laugh off his responsibility, but that contradiction was something that we spent the rest of the conversation discussing.

In another episode, episode 51, Cal left the family finances up to his wife Katie who felt alone and therefore turned to her mom a third party for help. Well, Kyle doesn't know, like he doesn't, he's not involved at all, so it's all up to me and I just feel overwhelmed. I'm the one dealing with it. It's on this side of the relationship and he's very not involved. Yeah, I just said out of mind, I guess, in a sense, you know, I'm not even really, you know, I haven't a basic understanding of how much we owe, but I don't know any of the numbers truly.

That's turning out, zone it out. Don't care. Don't want to have a part of it. And what are the consequences of you not only? Not being able to effectively plan and coordinate and talk with my life about it. And how does she feel right now? Abandoned, you know, alone. You started to realize that it was becoming really unmanageable, and that's when my mom got involved and basically was like, add up all your debt. What is it?

And it was like $60,000. Did you two look at each other? Did you say anything? I really don't remember him being involved in that at all. It was more like my mom and then she just kind of like took over. It was something that I decided would just be easier to it. If Katie's mom was going to offer to assist us, like that seemed like a nice easy way out of our situation.

It's like he doesn't want to be involved and he still hands off that I feel like I need to take control and then I don't feel equipped so I involved my family. And does it work? No, no. Money shouldn't be a burden to be passed around. For either party, in episode 46, Carolyn didn't know she didn't have access to their financial accounts, and she didn't actually really care to learn about them. Listen to how hands-off she was. And as you listen, ask yourself, does this dynamic sound familiar at all? Gavin, can you tell me about the last time that you tried to have a monthly money meeting

with Carolyn? I have the first time I was horrid. I thought, oh god, here we go again. Because he does like to talk about money. He does try. I mean, it was not the first time he's ever tried it, or we've ever tried to talk about money. That's like I was talking to him, Rick Wall. She pulled out her phone. She was looking at something on her phone, looking off into the middle distance, not at me. It wasn't a conversation. So he already comes in with all this information and he pulls it right up. There was never any like warm feelings that it was going to be.

So he comes in annoyed with me already that I'm not interested in that I was when he said, we have a meeting I rolled my eyes. Yeah, I mean, it's spot on. I'm definitely condescending. You are? Yeah, I think so. And I can be a bit of an asshole. So, you know, I'm okay with that. I mean, I'm not okay with it, but I'm okay admitting to it. So, he comes in hot, he starts talking about numbers, and then...

And I just shut down. In my own relationship, it would be easy for me to be the money guy. I know money, this is what I do. I actually find it to be very joyful. But when my wife and I got married, we talked about it. And I insisted that we both be involved, even though it was hard. It took us a while to get on the same page. And I told her why there are three main reasons. The first one day I'm going to be dead. It's

not morbid, it's reality. I'm going to be dead. And I want you to be prepared for what happens after that. I can't think of a worse fate than to leave a grieving partner defenseless. Next, I want us to both be good stewards of our money. To be good stewards, that means we need to understand it. We need to understand cash flow. We need to understand compound interest. We need to be able to talk about decisions together and think short term and-term and buy luxuries if we want and all kinds of stuff. And number three, honestly, it's just more fun.

It's more fun to be in a robot with the two people rowing rather than one person just sitting there. It's more fun to be able to talk about what do we want to do this year with our money? Who do we want to bring with us? What kind of experiences do we want to do this year with our money? Who do we want to bring with us? What kind of experiences do we want to create? So that was the vision that I set out for my wife and for me. And it took us time, but we've gotten there. We talk about money.

And we dream about money. And we do a rich life review and we travel and we talk. And it's not a loaded topic all the time. Sometimes it is, but we've developed a way to talk about it. If you or your partner don't want to talk about money, my suggestion to you is that you've got to change your approach. Often, you find yourself getting stuck in a certain dynamic. Usually it's one person being the pursuer, the other person avoiding it.

I would suggest you just flip that entire dynamic. Try making money conversations fun. This is something that is mind-boggling to people. They go, how can money be fun? Oh, it can't be fun. You're going to learn how. So use the free guy that I put together for having a conversation with your partner about money. Go to iwt.com slash no more fights to get it. That's iwt.com slash no more fights. Whenever I do an interview these days, one of the most common questions I get is,

what's the number one problem couples have with money? And it's not simply a lack of communication or one person overspending. In my opinion, the number one problem is lack of a shared, rich life vision. This is the number one lesson I want you to take away from the first year of this podcast. And that is you must have a shared, rich life vision with your partner. Let me give you an example from episode 25 where I spoke to Jack and Gemma. Gemma wanted to pay for convenience,

but Jack was not on board at all. Listen, 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. I'd rather pay some, want to do it. I don't want to do it.

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. But when it becomes this duty, it just doesn't feel like it's worth it. It's just like, I have, again, we have such limited time.

We have different work schedules. So when Gemma asks to be able to, you know, hire somebody to deliver groceries or clean the place, how does that strike you? I would rather die than pay somebody 50 hundred more three walks. Okay. Would you pay for somebody to do your laundry? No. Would you pay for somebody to clean your apartment? So, why would somebody pay somebody else to clean their house? 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 their house for them. I think it's lazy. If you don't clean the house, if you don't do it longer, if you don't take off the kids, then what is your use?

And it feels so utilitarian. Yeah, I agree. And I agree. I abhor that to my core. We can't afford that. So it makes it almost, he's being very cavalier with the money. What if I told you you could afford it?

Oh no, I know we can't. It does a huge, well, with disconnect. It creates a lot of stress. Jack was raised in Ghana. In the full episode, he admits there are lots of cultural and gender assumptions that he realizes he makes now. You should hear his wife, Gemma's thoughts too. She was raised in the Dominican Republic.

The irony of this conversation where Jack says he can't imagine paying for those convenient items is that he is a door man. He works in the service industry, but he can't see it. For another couple, Tammy and Mike in episode 27, things were a little different. This one started with a fight about Target. Tammy, can you tell me what happened recently when you went to Target? I found like the household things that we needed like cleaning supplies and I got snacks and all in all it ended up being like, I don't know, probably around like $250.

And so when I got home, he asked how much I spent. And so when I told him how much I spent, he got really upset because it is a decent chunk of money for me to just, you know, randomly spend. Like anytime we spend more than I would say like 50-ish dollars, we usually check in with each other like, hey, is it cool if I spend this much money? So for me to just go and drop like $250 at Target was kind of a big deal. I honestly like I felt a little bit taken advantage of and I initially didn't immediately voice my kind of this pleasure or whatever. I kind of just like said on it, but I think it was really obvious that I was upset. We kind of just got in a huge fight and honestly I'm terrible when we get into fights like

that because I tend to just almost like black out. Like I can't even tell you details of any of the argument. I just remember that I was getting more and more upset and Mike had basically had said something along the lines of the fact that he makes more money than me. So it's not fair for me to go and spend more money when that amount of money, at least, that he sacrificed to make, to stay at his job and to make the amount of money that he does. So like, if anybody is's gonna be spending that money,

basically it should be him. So I got super upset and then I left. I just like, I just said, I'm leaving and I've said other things and then I just got in the car and I drove off. Well, I just remember just feeling like small. Okay. Tammy, I noticed your crying.

Can you tell me why? I just think that it's really important to us to not recreate some of what we experience as children. If we don't have a shared vision, then it's very likely that we'll spend the rest of our lives fighting over pointless expenses like Target or how many lemons you bought from the grocery store. And it's hard to get ahead to start living a rich life when you spend so much time looking backwards and pointing fingers at each other. You can see how quickly not being on the same page with money can go from arguments to Target to something as toxic as I make all the money in this house. These things compound, they grow and then

these arguments one day explode. I believe it's important to constantly be trying to calibrate and align to get on the same page. And the way you do that is to start with a rich life vision. What's your rich life? What's my rich life? What's our rich life? And when you start there, you can start with the things you want to do rather than the things you don't want your partner to do. If my wife and I know that we want to travel once a year for this long, suddenly we can orient our finances around that. In Jack and Gemma's case, when they talked about their rich life, the perfect week, in that vision, they never once described doing laundry for hours at a time. So suddenly, it becomes clear where to spend your time, where to spend your money,

where to spend your attention. But first, you've got to have a rich life vision. And the beautiful part about that is it allows you to elevate to think bigger than these $3 questions. Now, if you wanna get on the same page with your partner about money, I would recommend you work through my Rich Life mini course. It's free, it's gonna allow you to create a shared vision of your life.

Go to IWT.com slash D Rich Life. That's IWT.com slash D Rich Life. That's IWT.com slash the Rich Life. Now, to zoom out, first of all, thank you for listening to those top five lessons from the last year. Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have questions about one of the links I've mentioned, you can go to the show notes.

But most of all, what I love to do is this principle we have inside my company. It's called show. Don't tell. We all want to know how to make money work for us and if in a relationship with our partners. And for so many years, there was lots of generic advice. I just wanted to actually hear couples talking about it, hear them arguing,

fighting, loving, crying, all of the emotions around money because money is emotional. And through this podcast, it has been a joy to be able to share these stories, very diverse stories from all over the world, all over the socioeconomic spectrum, and all kinds of different challenges people face. My hope, after listening to this episode and some of the previous episodes, is that you start to develop your own philosophy

for your rich life. Thanks for listening to I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I'm Rame Saytee. 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.