Ep 330 - How To Talk To Your Spouse About Money & Find Common Ground - Part 4: The Commitment

Hey, everybody. Flip and Danny here, founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group, family of companies. And welcome to another episode of our.

Podcast, which is called Freedom through passive Income.

That's right, and welcome to another episode. And this is our series, how to talk to your spouse about money and find common ground. And this is part for the finale, the commitment.

The commitment, that's right, yes. Now that you've done all three exercises, and if you haven't listened to 1, 2 and 3, please go back and listen to them because you need to do these in order. Every step builds upon each other and it's important to have the full conversation in order for this to be effective. So make sure you go back and listen to those.

Essentially, I'm giving you a step by step guide on how to buy a car.

He's trying really, really hard. So the commitment is all about discussing and reviewing again everything you've done in step one, two and three, specifically the action plan and the challenges part, which is part two and three. Those are super important. And you're both going to have to take ownership over it at this point in time and commit to actually doing it. So here's what part four consists of. You need to be asking yourself, is there anything we haven't discussed in order for us to feel confident to execute this plan? Right. And so now you're going to have that conversation. Is there anything that we missed? Right. And so Flit's gonna say, yeah, last night I was thinking about this and we haven't, you know, we haven't discussed that yet. And so what do we do if this happens? Maybe it was an additional challenge, maybe it was additional action that you thought would help in the process, or an additional idea that you came up with that you want. And so you're going to ask yourself and to have that discussion about if there's anything else. Are there any other resources needed? So like we told you in one of the other episodes, we found resources for us to use to be able to learn from others and figure out the things that we don't know. Right. Because even was it last night or the other night, I can't remember anymore. But we were on a phone call and they said something and I was like, what? I had no idea. And so I was like, learn something new. Okay. And so that's what those resources are. So do you guys want to find a mastermind? Do you want to find a tax strategist? Those are the things. Is there any other resources you haven't discussed? And this is the time to Discuss them and determine how you're going to go about finding one. So that could be our tax episode that we recently did and how we had gave you ideas on how to interview tax preparers or tax strategists and the questions that you want to ask. And a final secret, powerful question at the very, very end of a call so that you can take and into the next call. Right. And so that was a really good episode. Go back and watch that one. So that's another question, the big question that you're going to ask in this particular get together. You're going to say, can we both say out loud that we can commit to holding this responsibility by this date? So in your action plan, you may have said, this is how we're going to start. This is what we're going to do. And if you haven't put a date to it yet, then you're going to want to start putting a date to it. Right. Because when you put things in priority, you probably start putting dates there. So you said, this is our first one and we hope to have this done by X. You don't have to put a date, quite frankly. You could just. If you don't know, you don't know. Right. And you certainly don't want to disappoint yourself by putting a date that you don't achieve or stress yourself out of having to try and complete something by a certain date. I am guilty of doing that all the time. I put a date on everything and I hold myself accountable. And I have learned through a personal coach how bad that is for me, how bad it is for Flip that I'm doing that because I'm just stressing us out. But I was always excited because I was holding myself accountable. I was going fast. And if you put a date, then you know, when you get there, it's. Is it the Pareto principle?

Yes. Yes. I was just gonna say.

Yeah. So you do, what is it, you do something in the allotted time that you give yourself.

Yeah. A lot of you tell yourself you need to have something done in two weeks. You'll do two weeks to do. To do it.

Yeah.

But if you tell yourself that you've only got two days to do it, you'll do it in two days.

Yes. Yeah. So that's my mindset, is I'm going to train because it's going to make me do it right. It's going to make me shoot it to the top of the list. So there is a different strategy now that. Now I'm just looking at Things. What are the most important things? What are the priorities? I need to go ahead and get that done because it is the highest priority that is important to us. But it wasn't necessarily a date that stressed us out, gave us anxiety over achieving. So I'm still learning, you know, that's right. So you're going to want to say out loud to each other and saying, hey, Flip, I agree to these things that we have said. The first priority is going to be this. We're going to do this, and I'm going to go through everything, and I'm going to say, I agree, and I take ownership of my part of this exercise and scheduling time with you and prioritizing that and not putting it off. I'm going to very much out loud, straight looking in his eyes saying, I commit to this game plan. And I think it's important psychologically to yourself, because now you really, like, you didn't go, okay, we good? All right, great. And then you leave. And you didn't actually, like, hold yourself accountable to going, honey, I'm gonna do this.

Yeah. And the other person's sitting there going, are they really gonna do this?

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's the really big, big key for this episode, is making sure that you're taking ownership and committing and saying that out loud to your partner. Another question. What's gonna break in our day if we do hold this new commitment? So if we just said out loud we're gonna do it, anticipate what's gonna break? There's something else that I'm not going to be able to do because I put this appointment here. That means I have to move something else. So start listing those things out. And that might have been on your challenge list. So just do a double check to make sure there's nothing else. That is going to be a challenge because you've decided to take on this new commitment because it's going to require effort. Right. And do you have the time and the day to do it? And if you didn't, how are you creating time in order to prioritize this in your life? Because you feel like it's important, and you. You want to put yourself first, you want to put your marriage first, you want to put your finances first. What are you changing in order to make it happen? So that's part of this discussion. If you guys decide if we can't do this, if we just can't make the commitment, we don't have the time. We can't find the time. Right. Or we're just not. We're just not willing to take ownership of doing this for whatever reason. So if you can't do it, well, then who's the best person to help us? And what's holding us back now? Have that tough discussion, right? Why not? Why is this not important enough to you, Flip. To take a break here or change this structure or get up a little bit earlier, Anything. Because we just talked about in part one why it was important and the negative consequences of not doing it. So we go back to that list and talk about it again and gain that buy in one more time so that we can make sure that we're on the same page and that we're going to commit to this. Then at the very, very end, the last thing you're going to do is do we agree that if there's a potential breakdown or change of direction, that means something in those chann list probably happened. Right. We will reach out to each other for support before taking action that might not serve us and our goals.

Right.

And you wanted to commit to each other that we will reach out in a specific amount of time. So if you're sitting at carmax wanting to buy a car, you know that wherever you're going for that Ferrari or whatever it is that's on your list to buy, I have no idea.

Thank you for that.

If you're there in that and you see you're like, this is a potential breakdown, and this is a change of direction to our plan. Oh, they didn't have the right color then. I'm asking you to commit to me that this probably doesn't serve us or our goals. Right. It needs to be a conversation. And so within 15 minutes of you realizing that you're committing to, call me and say, hey, Danny, I'm actually at the dealer right now, and I know that we discussed this, but this is what I really want to do. Can we figure out a way to make it happen?

Yeah, I think yellow looks good on you.

Stop it. And then we're going to have that discussion. Right? So it needs to happen immediately so that you can both tackle it together. Because marriage is a team sport. Right. And it feels really good when you're in it together and you feel like you're participating in the decisions and the challenges that come your way. And together. Two brains is always better than one. Flip Many times comes up with ideas that I wouldn't have ever thought of, and many times they are better than my ideas that I thought of. So I think it's really, really important that Again, you go through all those steps, you make those agreements and you talk through them out loud because now you just did another session of vows. But it's about money. I agreed to do this. Let's do it. Let's change our lives. Let's change our kids lives. Let's have peace of mind. Let's sleep at night. Let's just make our lives better and have more fun and super, super exciting. Yeah.

And some of these conversations might be hard. They might not be a nice over dinner conversation. These might be hard conversations, but they need to be had because that really puts and if anything, it'll draw you closer.

Yes, 100%. And this car conversation, he does crap like this all the time. So you guys got to see it in three episodes.

I do know he does.

He is the spender of this family and he always wants stuff and I'm always going, ah, I don't know where.

This rant is coming from. Oh my goodness.

I love you and I've done nothing but give, give and give and give.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you head on over to our website freedomcapitalinvestments.com to buy a new Sorry, but to join the investor club, make sure you're talking to Ben and or CJ in serious. All seriousness, we do have a lot of stuff going on in the end of 2022, but you need to have that those conversations with Ben and or CJ to get into those conversations. Also check us out on all the social medias and all the fun stuff. But we like to end all of our episodes with Invest Smart, Live happy. Bye everybody.

Buy a car.

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Sam.