Couples Money Mistakes To Avoid While Accelerating Pay Off @PersonalFinancewithLeila

I want to wrap up with your mindset framework around relationship. Over the last seven plus years, I've worked with a lot of couples. I've worked with a lot of divorce couples and the. And I've. And I'm working with couples on the brink of divorce in divorce. And one of the things that I struggle with, not sure if you do or you definitely will, is when you're talking to, say, the wife, but the husband's not on the call or vice versa. Talk to the husband, wife's not present. I have found it so difficult to win wife or win the spouse over if they're not present, at least on one or two of the calls, just so they can get to know me. See where we're going with this, Where I'm going with it for you personally in your relationship, when it comes to how you guys do money, what works for you personally in this stage of life, and do you see it evolving in any kind of way where maybe there's a merge? Because I know you said you're engaged right now, so you're not married just yet. Is the wedding this year?

Next year?

Next year. Awesome. Awesome. Congratulations on that. I'm praying for you both. It's a wonderful experience. Be present during. The moment goes by so. Darn. It goes by so fast. It's so annoying. I had so much fun during our wedding that it was like, dang. It just. It like it just ended. Like, I was like, no.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's what's good, though.

It's awesome. Yes. So be intentional. So to. To you, how do you operate money? What are some principles for your relationship? And then if you're gonna share with others in your coaching practice, what have you seen to work really well? Either just picking up from other clients or you sharing what you do.

So I've talked about some of our. My fiance and I is how we handle our money. We. As of up until this point, it's been very separate. It will stay that way. People love to have opinion. Like, this is hard. I don't mind talking about this whatsoever, but unfortunately, being a YouTuber, one big negative of it. Uh, and not to discourage anybody, but it's like having an opinion on YouTube is scary. You know, putting. Putting your opinion, your thoughts, what you do is scary. And there's. You're never going to satisfy or please everybody. Um, so whenever I talk about my relationship and finances, it's always somebody who freaks out. But this is what works for us. And I think that's the biggest thing is doing what works for you and your partner. And as long as you're having conversations about it and y' all are both on the same page, that's the goal. So for my fiance and I, we have always kept things very separate, and I like it that way. I am somebody who I. I do want to get married, but marriage has always scared me, to be honest. And losing any sort of control in my life is very scary. So to give my money in any sort of way to. To somebody else is intimidating. So we are going to continue to keep our finances separate. We even, like, I track my spending and all of that separately. He doesn't do anything with his. He just, like, saves naturally and that's fine. That works for him. I don't count his net worth as my net worth. As of right now. We track every. I just track all my stuff. And even when it comes to, like, buying groceries or the things that we buy in our life, it's always just we go separately to the grocery store. We've always done that. Even with living together. The house that I'm in is his. Some people freak out about this as well. I'm not on the mortgage or anything like that. I refuse to be on the mortgage until married. I think that's a very dangerous game to play. It's a mistake I've made in the past. I was co. Signed on a car with a. With my ex and biggest financial mistake I've ever made. Not financially, like, not money wise, but mentally. Don't recommend. So that's like a big no no for me. But people freak out about that. Like, oh, what if. What if y' all break up? Where's the. Who's gonna give you the money? Like, this is the best position for me to be in, in my opinion. I could just leave if I wanted to. I'm not tied to a lease, nothing. Like, I'll just leave, lose the money. It's the same with renting an apartment. But that's aside the point going into our marriage, we are going to keep things separate. We are going to get a prenup that's happening in the next few months. And basically it's just to protect our assets in case of. Of anything. We obviously don't wish for a divorce, but that's just something that we want to do that we're comfortable with. We've already spoken with the lawyer and everything. Once we get married, we'll probably create a joint savings account and maybe like a joint credit card so that we can put money toward it. Like the Same amount each month, pay the house, pay for food out, pay for travel, other bills that are shared. And that's going to be the extent of it. Everything else will be, will remain separate and we split thing. Like we're fine with supporting each other. You know, if he needs, if we go out to eat, sometimes he'll pay, sometimes I'll pay or he'll give me some money for something, you know, but it's. Yeah, it's not off limits. It's just how we operate. So separate, for the most part. A little joint account since we're married.

I like that you are getting on social media and sharing what works. Again, we're in a season now. We're in a season of life where there's all these traditional ways of doing things. And we're living in a time where we now get to express other ideas that may seem non traditional, unconventional, but are getting fantastic results. So the fact that you can share an opinion and say, look, maybe the combined money in your household, either one of you has to take leadership and be the authority in terms of tracking, or it has to be both. But you guys cannot compete against each other. This is a partnership. You can't compete. You have to lift each other up and see, and want to see each other win. So you got to figure out who in the relationship is the entrepreneur, the academic, the analyzer, the planner, the spontaneous. So it's like. And we have some similar things as well. Like again, like, we're young. So it's like what you and I are doing is we're writing our own blueprint for a successful life. For whatever reasons, whether it's trauma. This happened to my mom, this happened to my dad, these things that happened. You mentioned fears. So there's certain things there that drives you to say, I'm gonna do this right, and I'm gonna protect myself. Not because I want something to fail, but if the apocalypse is gonna happen, if the power is going to go out, if a hurricane's coming, I'm going to get impact windows, shutters. I'm going to have plenty of water, I'm going to have food and shelter. I'm going to have fire lighters, flashlights. Whatever I need, I think I need in an event like that, I'm going to have. And guess what? If I never use it, great. But it's there. I'd rather need it, right? I'd rather have it and not need it and need it and not have it in that, in that scenario. And that's how I, you know, look with a lot of things. So it's like very similar. My household, my wife and I, when we first started living together, we actually tried combining our money. So she would send a portion of her check into my account and then we were, you know, managing out. I'm the one that manages most of the, you know, all the funds, all the investments. I tell her where to put the money and stuff and guide her in that sense. But once she started contributing over 50% of her paycheck to my account that I was stewarding, for some reason, like, it was hard for her to figure out how much she could play with use. And then it was like she actually started just spending all that, the, the, the remaining of it. And then she was like, I'm seeing myself spend more money. I'm not being intentional. And so we were like, you know what? Although it might be efficient for my particular strategy for us to combine our income, it might make more sense for you to just manage everything you got coming in.

Yeah.

Once we made that switch, she literally is saving 50 plus percent of her check now, where before it was not that number.

Yeah.

So it just, it got more, more difficult with it. And then for me personally, this is just like my desire wanting to be a provider as a man is. I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. Here's what I would like to do. I want to start taking over some of your fixed expenses little by little. So I start. I took over her student loan payment, the minimum one. Then I took over her phone bill, took over the, the, the dog subscription, the vet monthly subscription thing, you know, slowly but surely taking over these fixed expenses. And then she has this freedom to, hey, when we go out grocery shopping, she'll pull out her card. It's on me. Right. Kind of fun. I'm like, okay. And then get it. I'm like, thank you. I feel the princess. Love it. And then she'll be like, okay, dinner's on me if we go out, or something like that. So it's like she's got this freedom to now spend more intentionally, but then she finds herself saving even more money, which benefits me no matter what, like in the, like in the overall portfolio things. If you're saving more money because of this new system that we're doing, I'm all for it. And we don't have to acquiesce to this traditional way where it's like you got to have a joint account and all the money has to be put in together. And honestly, as a business Owner, like, it can be hard to, to track that if you're like, wait a second, I'm just. More money coming in, you know, kind of separate things. So yeah, we do things separate terms of money, but when it comes to covering bills, I cover everything. That's, you know, to, to provide. Right. And then little by little, to just challenge myself and to increase my income. Because my goal is to retire her by the end of next year.

Oh, wow.

And so that means her walking away from a six figure career as a lawyer.

That's so cool.

So it's like, okay, that's my personal desire and I'm taking over these expenses so that, okay, when she does eventually stop, we're not reliant on, on that six figure income or she's not reliant on it because now we've been able to save and invest enough to, to cover that. So you got to figure out what your style is. Right. And what's going to work best for the household. And I would also say someone's got to be the leader. It could be the woman, could be the man. Typically it's the man, but it could be the woman in terms of like, where are we investing? Right. Who's spending the time reading the book to say, yeah, we're going to do a Roth and we're going to do this or do that, have our money here and grow our wealth here like this. Even if you're not the one making it either, more or less, whatever the case may be, got to figure out who the leader is and who the support teammate is in that particular venture. And then, hey, if joint works, great. If it doesn't, don't feel bad. Like, yeah, Leila's doing separate. I do separate.

And.

And then you get to just determine whether you're the man listening. You get to just decide whether you want to provide fully for your partner or not.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, nowadays, like, I think it's for. It's quite a blessing. I'm pretty sure Sebastian, he's in a really good position where he's like, okay, I'm not with a woman that just wants to have me just, you know, pay for everything. Where it's like, there's this generation of women that are producers and they love to do, like, that's their purpose. They're walking in it to your sense. So if you're producing income, you're producing value for the household. That's a pretty cool thing. So, you know, blessings to Sebastian there on that. You know, got a wonderful partner and just like with my wife, she's a producer, she's a lawyer, spent all that time, six figure career. Like that's, that's not easy to walk away from and then fully rely on a man. It's just totally different compared to we look at our parents, parents in that sense where it was just single income household where today you can have your cake and eat it too. I would argue if both want to work, yes, you can make it happen. You just got to be intentional. And there may be seasons where woman makes more than the man, you know. Oh my God. Who's, who's, who's. Who's upset, right? Like, or if it switches, just be intentional all the way through. Have fun with it, grow and support each other's gifts at the highest level. And definitely this is a shout out to you Layla. Like those of you that are listening, that need coaching, like consider Layla as a financial coach to have that outside person come in and identify your leaks because that's what we do best as coaches. We get to come into their world and we get to clearly see all the red flags, all the leaks because we're not emotionally tied to it. We're professionally engaged in a relationship and our incentive is to see you win as a household. So really consider that that's huge. Um, I, Yes, I'm a financial coach and I believe in collaboration. I, I get plenty of business already. So I'm like really been bringing on people like yourself to just like expand the world of financial coaching because this is super underrated and I'm also trying to get, I'm also trying to get my clients, they know who they are that are financial coaches that are not creating content. So this is a big like sort of call out to them, you know exactly who you are. Please get online so I can like give you a shout out and pass business because there's a lot of people that need help, you know, and you know it. You, you got 6, almost 7 million plus views. 68000 subs. You cannot serve all those people, right? And so it's like if we can get more coaches on here and we just collaborate and share, then there more people are going to, are going to transform their finances to the whole another degree and then collectively we're going to see that $1.1 trillion debt number come down and all the other debts that come with it.

Yeah, I hope so.

I hope so too people. So too.

People always like to say their main argument because I talk to a lot of clients too that want to create content. Or do something. Maybe not financial coaching, but at least get on YouTube or whatever niche. They're like, it's oversaturated or like, I can't stand out. Everything's oversaturated. It's irrelevant. Like, just keep being consistent. You have to show up and that's. Yeah, you'll get there. If you really want it, you'll get there.

Absolutely.