11. Mariah Hudler

Foreign.

Welcome to the Wealth Gap warriors podcast where we dive deep into the pressing issue of wealth inequality in communities of color, cultural money beliefs and personal finance. Some of our families are struggling. Even people are actually homeless. Join us as we interview inspiring individuals and organizations across the United States who are dedicated to eradicating this disparity through their creative solutions and innovative approaches.

Together, let's explore how we can build a more equitable society for all. Here's your host, Luis Barajas. Let's get into it. Welcome back everyone, to Wealth Gap warriors podcast. And we've got a really special guest with us today, Mariah Hudler, who is a financial therapist. And most people don't, are not even aware of financial therapists. I mean, I've used a therapist in my prior life and, and you know, and, and my financial therapy is something that is changing the lives of many people and then, you know, eradicating that wealth gap. That's what we're, that's what this podcast is all about. Welcome Mariah. It's a pleasure. I understand that you're out of Sacramento, California or in that area out there.

Great. And thank you so much for being with us. And first of all, I'd love for you to share a story about how you went from a therapist to really kind of focusing on financial therapy and helping people with financial trauma. What inspired you to get into that field?

Sure. Well, first, just want to thank you for having me on. I feel really honored.

So, yeah, my journey to financial therapy is definitely.

It's not a straight road for sure. And as you said that financial therapy is relatively new. It's about like 12 years that it's been formalized, however, from a mental health standpoint. And I am a licensed mental health clinician, lcsw.

Finances and money and stress have always been interwoven into issues mental health conditions. So my journey actually started.

Kind of with myself back. I mean, if I were to go way back. But I come from a family where, you know, it was essentially we were probably fairly financially well off. But the feelings of financial scar, scarcity were passed on to me. My mom was a single mother. She was financially responsible for the family. Those that stress and anxiety was passed on to me. Secondary to that. I grew up in a Catholic community and we were very much taught about being very service oriented. St Francis of Assisi, that we just don't think about money. You give all of your money away and you work amongst the people. So that really, I think shaped me to go into a service oriented area like social work. And it really started hitting me in calling actually in grad school when I had to take out loans to basically help people. And I started to realize the impact of carrying a large amount of loans and then going out into the work world, having to pay those back. And it started to really show up in how.

Basically like how much stress I had around finances. And then I started also seeing it amongst the people that I worked with. So I also, you know, did a couple years I lived in Ecuador and obviously I worked for the working boys center that's called El Centro del Muchacho Trabador. And you know, this was a very much impoverished community and really just the, that kind of financial trauma piece of just living and survival in the moment and how they were working for bus fares and working on the streets to be able to do that.

And how the program looked to break that cycle of poverty through education and training. So all of those were kind of mixed in together. I did go into social work and I landed in medical social work. And I always, you know, was very interested in this personal finance aspect of, you know, how being in service oriented and still needing to make a living wage.

And you know, like where those two meet.

For someone that's very socially oriented or service oriented. So, you know, like, I just became so involved in personal finance and figuring that out for myself, challenging the beliefs that I had.

And financial therapy wasn't necessarily a thing when that was happening. But I started looking around be like, oh, like, well, maybe I could do financial coaching. And. But then I thought, well, that's such a loss because I have this mental health aspect. I really wish the two could be married. And eventually I did find that through the financial therapy Association. I was like, that's it. This is it. There is research there. You know, this is becoming more of a thing. This will be, this is something that I feel like I can contribute to and you know, blend mental health with financial therapy to provide services for clients.

That's, that's, that's great. I go back, you know, I used to work with really super wealthy people. And then years ago I went back to the body to help the poor. Right. When you were. And when I lived in the body, I didn't know that I was poor because I had such great parents come out of the body, work with really wealthy people, then go back and this is back in the, I mean like 1990, 91. And back then there was no Internet, there was very little financial literacy. I catered to the Latino, to the Hispanic community. And they said, well, you know, financial literacy was lacking. And when I went back, I realized that no amount of financial literacy was going to help an impoverished community because there were limiting cultural beliefs. And also there was a lot of financial trauma. And there was no such thing we're talking about back in like 91. And there was no such thing as financial therapists or even therapists focused on financial trauma. It wasn't something that anybody was bringing up. So I go back to that, you know, as being part of also the financial planning industry. We still have that mindset that financial literacy will help you, but if there's financial trauma, that trauma sabotages your mindset to, to, to achieve success or be consistent in the execution of achieving any kind of financial success. So, you know, how does financial therapy in your mind differ from financial coaching or financial counseling? Because we're seeing right now an uptick on financial coaches, right? There are a lot of people that are not in the financial planning industry who are not there. They're not selling mutual funds or ETFs or insurance, but they're going into financial coaching and they're doing a lot of the, they're doing a lot of the, the. They're still going on to the values and having people write down their values and their beliefs and their money stories. Explain to us how financial therapy is different than going to a financial coach or financial counselor.

From my understanding of what, in terms of how I refer out in financial coaching is from today forward. So we're really looking at things that are, that you can put action steps around. It may go a little bit back, it may do some mindset work.

But essentially it doesn't really have the roots of what mental like health would do. So in financial therapy, I mean there is a range of financial therapists. Not everyone does have a mental health background. And I think that that's really important to understand as a consumer difficult when you're just out there looking for a little bit of support and assistance. But you know, financial coaching really focuses on here Forward financial counseling, you know, is like credit and debt, forward focused and kind of more of like, you know, shorter term to long term planning. Our financial planners are really kind of more into the long term planning. I feel like, you know, as a mental health clinician who focuses on finance and am a certified financial therapist that I'm at kind of the beginning, all of this. So I'm looking at like trauma. I'm looking at infidelity, financial caregiving, things that are really.

Difficult and interwoven, challenging, complex layers, have some ptsd in there, really taking a look at, like, what those messages were from childhood that have been imprinted on you like DNA and how you arrive into adulthood. Because we don't really have a framework of how to develop our own personal finance and abuse and, you know, how we interact with money. So a lot of it, and like you were saying is like this initial part of if you don't understand your money story culturally, gender wise, like.

Your family, your family history, there might be some key points that you're missing out on. Like, you know, my grandmother's from Ireland and she came over and completely impoverished. And I mean, I can tell you that my father definitely carries a lot of that generational trauma. And like this, this, you know, generation really is so much different. And. But yet you still need to kind of understand that because it is your history and there are pieces there that have come with you and you have to be. You have to be aware of them, you have to heal them, you have to put compassion on them. And sometimes we need to do a bit of deeper work, speak.

To speak to the people that are listening to us or watching us. What is fine? What is trauma or what is financial trauma? Right, because we talk about it. I mean, there's a lot of things that happen just all the time. And. And sometimes the word that you use was imprint, right? Things happen and it's not imprinted. But then there's a. Things that are. That hit us so emotionally strong that we never forget about it. It's like sometimes, like you say, when. When I smell a certain smell, it'll take me back to when I was 5 years old at whatever park and I remember and almost feel like being there. I would assume that certain events happen in a person's life that are imprinted that somehow take you back to that, even though. Even though you know that it's not right what you're doing or what your behaviors are. Even though if you know what your behaviors are.

You still do them because you kind of sabotage it, because it's that trauma. But give us some examples of what trauma is or what financial trauma can be in people.

Sure.

Financial trauma is chronic stress and anxiety related to money. So how. Some of the causes of that could be underemployment or under earning for a long period of time. It could be, you know, an impoverished childhood where you're constantly in a survival state. I have a client who has excessive debt for being a professional.

But he grew up in a, you know, a country that had civil strife and civil war. So he Continuously like, I mean he was in a survival mode for the majority of how he grew up and into young adulthood, but he's now in the States. However, his, if you were to look at him from a professional standpoint, you would never understand the chaos that goes on underneath him in terms of how it manifests himself in the way that he spends money and has like found himself essentially servicing debt and you know, you know, to the wall in another state of survival. So, you know, that's one example of like how this can show up for you in finances. It may show up differently for another person. But if I were to, if I talk to him about values or emotions around what is happening underneath there, he's, you know, he would say this is a privilege. I've never thought about what is important to me or how I want to live my life. Like there was never a chance to, there was never an opportunity. I mean he constantly lived in that state. So there's a lot of like unpacking that has to happen around those things to be able to create space to respond differently to financial decision making. And that's, you know, essentially how it can show up. So other ways. Go ahead.

No, I was going to say, you know, it's interesting, right? Because I mean what I'm thinking about at would when, when you're telling me the story of this, of this gentleman was how do, for example, when someone doesn't have any money, let's say that you lost your job, you don't have any money, obviously you're going to be stressed out because you got to pay the rent, you got to make the house payment, you got to make the car payment. So you're going to be in a lot of stress. What is it though, for example, like this gentleman or other people that you're going to give us some other examples of what people are going through trauma, which was a great example by the way you just gave us. How does this gentleman think, you know, I'm stressed out or whatever, but I need to see a financial therapist. Like this is something deeper because most people don't think are not that, you know, self aware or very reflective that maybe something deeper that happened a long time ago is affecting their current behaviors now or sabotaging the behaviors. Because they're working with a financial planner. Because I work with, I mean a lot of my friends are financial planners and they say, you know, I get somebody on track, I get them on a budget, we start putting money away and I don't know what it is that sabotages Them and I, and I always say, I go, they probably need a financial therapist because if you keep doing this. But how does someone become self aware where they say, you know what? After listening to you, I really do need to see Mariah. I really need to kind of call her and then maybe identify if something is normal. It's a normal thing because I'm constantly don't have money and it's normal that I'm stressed out because that should be a normal response. So you don't have money that they're stressed or some level of anxiety or is it so bad that people aren't sleeping? Or, I mean, what is it? How is it that they end up showing? What do they tell you? I think I need a financial therapist. Because not a lot of people are going to admit that they need a financial therapist.

True. And I mean, there's, I think, I mean, there's several different ways of how people have arrived to me mostly through Google searches. So there's something in them that there's something off that they need to attend to, but they're not 100% sure what it is.

Or someone gently nudging them and saying, like, you might benefit from this. Like, I do. You know, with financial planners, like, I think I presented to the California Financial Planning or at least the San Francisco one, just about, you know, financial trauma. The reason why your clients aren't successful, like, because they're, they're stuck. Like, you know, they can go so far, but then there's like regresses or there just seems to be barriers that just are unidentified. And you know, as a financial planner, like, yeah, you're not 100% sure either because you have to really go back to be like, could there be something significant? So I think that. And also that you're starting to see more of this money and emotions in the media. So articles, books, and I think people are starting to really relate to that being like, could this be why I have an, like a tendency towards impulse spending? You know, could this be why I cannot spend money.

Because I'm living in this state? Like, where is this balance? Like, and, you know, I think here in the United States we all suffer collectively from disassociation. So a lot of us are walking around on autopilot. Like, so many people arrive at just like, I make really good money, but I just don't know where it goes. It's because a lot of it's connected to this mindlessness around it. And that's not, you know, a piece of shame around it. It's just that. It's just the way we move as a society. We don't necessarily think about how we spend. We just know that we do that or it's just become normalized to do that. And we're also fed from a, you know, consumeristic point of view, like, yes, keep spending. And we're going to create all these different ways to make it so easy for you to spend. Right.

The interesting. So. So sometimes I think that we make assumptions when it comes to people who have financial trauma. We think that they have financial trauma because they don't have any money or because the trauma that happened before has causing them to have these bad behaviors. So they're struggling with money, but there are people with financial trauma who are doing really well financially as well. I think it's something that you just mentioned right now that just brought it to top of mind was I have somebody who's got so much money, but they don't want to spend it. I mean, for example, you know, they'll say, you know, I tell them, well, I mean, they're so concerned about them having enough money that when they retire that they'll have it for the rest of their life. And I said, not only will you have enough money, you're going to be living like tens of millions of dollars to your beneficiaries. Spend some of it. You know, it's. I had somebody at one point who had this really terrible toothache and she had like a million and a half dollars sitting in a cash account at a bank and she hadn't been to the dentist. And I go, you know, she says, do you know how much a dentist costs? You know what's going to cost me if I go to the dentist? I go, you're in pain and you have a million and a half dollars in the back and you're. You're concerned about paying the dentist so you can be healthy again. I go back to. That's where I think, well, hold on a second. There's nothing that I can do as a financial advisor to help this woman out. That's where. But they also have to want to have the help. Right? I mean, the thing is that if she's not even aware that if she says, well, that's just how I. That's. I don't want to spend the money on that. She has to be. She's going to either want the help or be aware that she needs help, otherwise it doesn't matter. Right? We can't, we can't. You can't help a person like that.

Yeah, exactly. A hundred percent. And you know, it's really about this like joy and connection to like your relationship to money. And a lot of people don't look at their relationship with money. I mean, I just love, like, you know, meet someone, like, let's talk about your relationship with money. You know, it's just not something that we talk about or feel comfortable talking about. There's not a lot of people that would feel comfortable talking about, about money. A lot of people. I was even talking with a friend today and she's like, I know I have a lot of issues with money, but it feels so vulnerable to even look at it that I just rather just go on ignoring it.

Right.

But yet knowing that nothing will change and you like high functioning, you know, like, you know, very, you know, well off in it. And I see it with my own mother, you know, in retirement, when you think like, oh my gosh, like, go and enjoy you made it. You know, do all these things, like, you know, you're aging, like take first class, you know, and it's like, oh no, I never do that. And I was like, why? Like, you know, all these years of scripting and saving, like, you did your job, like, amazingly, like you carried us through, like, do it. Just go. But I, I can't change her story either. You know, that is where she sits. To me, it's like, why not? You know, But I've already worked on this relationship with money. So, you know, I think that that's, it's just around all of us that, you know, we each have our own little unique relationship with money. And a lot of it does stem from, you know, how we, we grew up and her parents grew up in the depression. So, you know, it's like, you're gonna keep it, you're not gonna spend it.

Yeah.

Unless you absolutely have to. And you know, like within values. Like she was happy to do that for education, but, you know, you can't squeeze the pennies out of her pocket, you know, something new that you wanted.

So I'd love for you to share with us a story of someone that knew that they needed financial therapy or maybe was. Were referred by a financial advisor who told them that, you know, there's not much more I can do because you really need a financial therapist that comes to you where they were at, kind of what happened in the process and what changed? Because I would love for people, because there might be people who are listening to us right now that unbeknownst to them that really are going through some Financial trauma, but they don't understand. Maybe they're going to get some financial help or if they have you as a financial therapist or another financial therapist. But what does their life look like after going through some therapy and acknowledging working with someone? Whether it's six months, a year, you'll let me know how long it normally takes to break somebody's trauma, right? I don't know how long that would be. But what changes in them and what. What behaviors change or what do they come back and tell you? Mariah, you're not going to believe I finally slept well or whatever they're going to tell you. Share with us a success story from kind of a beginning to end.

Yeah, I had a referral for someone to come see me. He was a small business owner. He really wanted to scale and grow, but he had back taxes that he hadn't paid for quite a while, and he needed to engage with a tax lawyer, attorney. And they had encouraged him to get some support and assistance for it because what they saw was just the cycle was going to repeat itself. And so when we work together.

You know, this is an area that he had a really difficult time talking about. But what we found out was this was actually a generational thing, that his father had done the same thing and had some really intrinsic beliefs around paying taxes and what that looked like. So his father worked really hard to avoid paying taxes. Taxes. And although he didn't necessarily.

I mean, I think he, you know, rightfully questioned, like, you know, where, like, what are all my taxes going to? Or, you know, just normal kind of, kind of thoughts will be like, oh, wow, you know, taxes are a lot. But he found himself in the same situation.

You know, not paying taxes, even though he knew he would throw state taxes in it. And it made sense. So the work that we did together was.

You know, identifying and increasing that awareness and then building around.

Knowing that these were going to be feelings and emotions that he were going to have. They were almost contradictory to one, that he knew he needed to pay them, and two, of, like, actually doing it, of going through and doing it and feeling good about it. So.

We really worked on just grounding himself in the moment of when it came time to separate the money from his business, creating a separate account for it. Just his practice of, you know, putting it, putting it aside and taking the emotions off of it and viewing it as, you know, what it is. Like, this isn't all of my income. There's a portion here that. That goes elsewhere. So really grounding in the moment and you know, working through those ruminating thoughts or those feelings of paralysis of, like, letting go of that money, why this money has so much attachment, emotional attachment to it. So we really worked on those pieces and.

Yeah, and in terms of timing, I mean, it's just really different for everyone. Like, I really know for.

Clients that come to me with that, I really want to know if this is something they want to work on, if they're ready to make some changes, because.

You know, it can be intense work in a short amount of time. And then, you know, and then it's also. Yet it's a long journey that they're going to have to, you know, continue to navigate these feelings. They may not be intense. Worked on some reframing and different ways to kind of heal that, but it will be with them, you know, throughout decades. So, you know, he came back, I think, like a year or two later and just said, like, you know, he had. He'd scaled the business. Like, you know, he. Like, the management of the finances were really good. He actually removed, like, the bookkeeping away from him. Him. You know, he was, like, responsible for it. And he just realized, like, I just. I just don't need to be involved in that on that level. And also scaling helped him to do that. It was like, okay, I can take this piece and this is better for someone else to do.

Yeah, that's. That's amazing. I mean, I probably could refer you 10 clients that I'm thinking about right now that are entrepreneurs that struggle so much with letting go of paying taxes. They'd rather not earn money or they'd rather do things that are illegal to not have to pay taxes because they don't want to give the government where they're. You know, the thing is that they can't scale the. Can't grow. You can't, you know, buy a nice house if you don't have good, strong financial statements and a tax return. And I tell someone, well, you know, you need to earn half a million to buy the house that you want to buy. You're earning it, but you're only showing 150, 200,000 on your tax return. And it's at catch 22. But they feel like, well, if I make 600,000, then I have to pay 200,000 in taxes, and they don't want to do that. So. But I said, but you can't grow, right? You can't grow. And which leads to. This conversation is fascinating, by the way. There's so many things that are going off in my mind that's crazy.

So this gentleman comes and it's almost sometimes if he's had this financial trauma you're working with, where you can't let go.

If I were not, not a financial therapist, I'm going to go back to a lot of the books that I'm reading on more of the mindset or belief systems where we're there victims or we have a scarcity mindset. But we have to understand that behind that scarcity, behind what created that scarcity mindset are things that have happened to us or stories or our prior history that have.

Caused us to create that scarcity mindset. It's just not. We have a scarcity mindset. Right. I always. One of the, one of the concepts that I use in my office is, you know, die till you touch bottom, meaning that, you know, we, you, you've got to make sure that when you're working with someone on a budget and they're overspending it, you know, you're not going to tell them to stop spending because there are other things going on in their head. They're overspending because for a lot of different reasons that they're feeling the same thing that when we overeat for comfort. Because we're stressed out. Right. Or people overspend because they're stressed out or because they want to, or they come from a neighborhood where they've never shown any kind of wealth and they want people to show, they want to show the world that they're now wealthy. So they're spending all this money and not saving anything. I've got artists that, who have made in one year $10 million Mariah. And at the end of the year, they have nothing or a couple of years, it's basically gone where they've got their private jets and their cars and everything else. And we say, you cannot, you can't afford a private jet. You can't afford a Bentley. You can't. And they still said, well, it's my money, I could do whatever the heck I want to do with it. And I'm thinking here, it's like I want to send them over to Mariah now to get some help because I'm trying to help them. Right. I have all the tools to make the financial successful, but I don't, I don't. Because all the tools include somebody like you that can go another step. So that's, that's a step behind to help me set them up so they can then really put money away.

Yeah. This is fascinating. Now quickly, what, what, what are there Any misconceptions about financial therapy that you'd like to address? I mean, I don't. I don't know. I mean, I think that one of the financial misconceptions is when every time people see financial therapy and I guess in the Latin community, Latino community, it's like, oh, you've seen a psychologist, you've seen a therapist. Are you like, are you crazy or what's going on? Right? What kind of misconceptions are there? And seeing a financial therapist.

Well, you know, I think overall therapy in general has become much more normalized in our society, thank goodness. So it's, it's more of, you know, objective party being able to support you on, you know, beyond what, like a budget and, you know, just the numbers tell you. So misconceptions. I don't know. I think it's more about give it a chance. It's an investment in yourself. It's exploration. It's something that's very different to, you know, most of the people, they love going like, I mean, initially start everyone on their money story because I just think it's so fascinating to facilitate a conversation about money. And most people have never had any type of conversation like that. They're absolutely fascinated by it. So.

I don't even know where I was going with that, but.

Well, it was, I mean, was there any misconceptions about, about working with a financial therapist?

Yeah, so. So, yeah, yeah, that's right. So, you know, it's like, yeah, give it a shot. Like, do some exploration. Do some be curious. Think back like a generation or two. Like, what was happening with your, your family? Like, what have you brought with you? Like, what wounds? You know, also, you know, as therapists, we very much look at it like attachment. Like, you know, what, what kind of attachment did you have as like a child? And like, how does that show up for you? Like, you know, like an anxious attachment or a secure attachment. Like, what kind of attachment do you have to your money too? You know, and like, where did that story come from?

There's just so many things to kind to learn and all of it is to really gain balance, right? To increase joy, wealth, life satisfaction.

You know, for me, I'm starting to look to spend a little bit more time with families and what that looks like. Because what I do know is the messaging starts early. So I want to start working with families that have children, that want their children to be successful and. But how can we start now with this messaging? So the messaging is so important. Like, basically by the age of Five. We understand money concepts. By the age of seven, we have our money personalities in place. If you have a money personality in place and you're like, you know, very kind of impulsive, you need time to learn how to manage that essentially, too. If you're like the Alex P. Keaton, maybe dating myself here, where, you know, very vigilant around money, you know, there might have to be, like, let's talk about joy, and let's talk about the things that you do want to spend money on instead of, you know, like, hoarding it or keeping it all away. So, you know, you know, there's other pieces here because you can be in the same family and experience the same thing, but have a completely different view of how you experienced it. And also, like, your personality, you know, plays a part in it, too. You know, what are your natural tendencies?

That. That's fascinating. Working with families. I. Some. Some other idea just got popped in my head right now. What do you do with someone who's now maybe in their mid to late 50s, right, and has a lot of anxiety about. Because they're saying, you know, I'm probably. I want to retire by, let's say, at full retirement age for Social Security, which is like 67 years old now, right? 66 and a half. 67. And I got 10 years, and I've saved nothing. And they're thinking, well, everybody talks about how we're living longer and longevity. And I went to a financial planner, and he. He went and put me all the way out to age 95. But if I want to retire at 65, go to 95, that's 30 years. But I'm not. I. There's no way that I'm going to be able to save in the next 10 years to retire over the next 30 years. So that's real anxiety, right? I mean, they start thinking about, I'm gonna run out of money. Is. Can a financial therapist help with those type of emotions? I mean, I know that you got to put money away and you got to work with it, but it's that. I mean, a lot of people, really, that I'm meeting with are really stressed out because they all say, louis, I should have met you 30 years ago. Who knows where I'd be now? I said, yeah, but you know what? If you would have met me 30 years ago, you weren't ready for me. You weren't ready to put money away. You were still kind of spending everything. You weren't thinking about it. Is there a way to help people.

Think differently when it comes to that kind of. Because it's a real. It's. It's. That's a real anxiety right now. They have other trauma coming in the way. Maybe that's why they didn't save the money. Or we're thinking ahead. But is. Does that help also? Because again, I go back to. There's only so much that I can do. I've got them maxing out their 401k now. They're starting to spend less, they're saving more, but they're still really worried. They're still. You can see. See the anxiety as they're getting older. And then they're starting to see some of their friends maybe pass away at an early age, some of them living longer. They're seeing some parents that are in there. You know, they're thinking, well, nobody in my family's ever lived past, you know, 80, 90. And now their parents are in their mid-90s, and they're. There's a lot of anxiety. Is there any way to help people who are going through that?

Definitely. I mean, I think there's a couple pieces here. One, we have a. Keeping up with the Joneses. Like, we're always looking to compare ourselves to others, and we're not necessarily kind of grounding ourselves in who we are, how we spend our money and how much we actually need. Like, what is retirement? You know, what does that look like for you? What would your spending be for that? And, you know, like, as, you know, like, wealth is relative. Like, you know, someone could feel really wealthy on, you know, 70,000 a year in retirement, and others wouldn't feel so comfortable with that. Right. So I think it's that, like, reframing of, like, okay, yes, and we're here. What do we have control over? You know, and it's like, if. If your lifestyle, if you want to continue this lifestyle, let's take a look at the ways that we could do that. Right. So it's this. Opportunities. It's reframing and working through that. Like, yeah, you will continue to have, like, these thoughts of. Or these, like, difficult thoughts and feelings of, like, anxiety around, like, I started too late. I'm. I'm gonna die poor. I'm never gonna have enough. And accepting that those feelings will be there. But you can have those feelings and you can continue to work towards a life that you want to build or you have been building. You know, sometimes it's like, oh, I haven't saved enough. Okay, well, it sounds like you want to start saving more. So, yeah, you know, those challenging feelings. But yet you still work towards the life that you want to live. Great.

Let's shift over now to couples and couples and money and a couple. One we're going to talk about is couples that are not married yet or going to be living together and pool their, their income.

One of the questions I have all the time, I, you know, I, my clients tend to be a little older who are now re. The remarrying or they're marrying older, and now they do each have assets.

And, and then all of a sudden I have, if it's my client, I have to bring up the concept of we're getting a prenuptial agreement created for you. Right. Geez. Like, yeah, I really want to do that, but my wife or my soon to be wife or my fiance.

They'Re just going to get, they're going to get upset and I don't know what's going to happen. And I mean, it's, it's so tense when we have to bring it up. And I'm the one that usually has to bring it up with the other party.

But when it comes to money and it comes to couples, we also know that they always say that, you know, money is one of the sources of divorce, one of the main sources of divorce. I always say it's lack of communication about the money. Not, not the money part. Right. More the lack of communication. Somebody who's done any kind of financial betrayal or is hiding money because you're hiding things because they don't want the other spouse to find out that they're spending money on certain things. And sometimes, like, for example, in the community that I, that I work in, the Latino community, you'll have, you know, let's say one of the, one of the, the couples, one person is still helping out their family members because they're in an impoverished state, and the other person says, well, hey, hold on a second. We're not putting enough away for our kids and our family. And then they find out that they're doing it. You know, sometimes they find out that they're doing it without them trying to find out. And it creates a lot of, I'm sure you've talked to couples like that that have gone through that stuff. What are the, some of the red flags when somebody's getting together that. Or what are the, some of the positive things that they should be doing before they even marry when it comes to money. And so like, if I send a couple to you and you know, I said, listen, I would love for you guys to get some help and learning how to communicate before you get married about money and talking. So what are the things that couples should be talking about? What should be doing? Should I ask for my fiance for a copy of her credit score and her credit statement? I don't know. Tell me.

Yeah, I mean, I would put those in two different banks. Right? So premarital couples coming, maybe first marriages. Okay. Like, this is great. Like, if anybody is out there listening, this is the wedding present. You want to give premarital financial counseling because it gives a great opportunity to sit down and have someone, a third party, who feels really comfortable about speaking about money and facilitating a conversation to create financial intimacy for this couple. So most of us don't know financial intimacy is, but it is around being able to talk about money and to have created trust around money and to have talked about like, lifestyle, goals, value, how, you know, money management roles, who's splitting, what, who's responsible for what. Like, if, you know we're going to have separate accounts, which is, you know, totally fine, I may leave that totally up to the couples. I just provide the options available and make sure it feels comfortable to both of them. So premarital financial counseling is excellent. And the sooner, the better. You can have, you know, conversations in your relationship about money will make you feel more confident and it will get you to wealth sooner because you are in a partnership, a financial partnership. You know, I mean, you're legally married. You are basically beholden to each other. So yes, it makes sense. Like, let's see your credit report. Let's get, you know, like our net worth down. Like, let's see what all the accounts are. Because ultimately it's like, well, I'm going to keep my own money because, you know, like, you know, for safety or, you know, there's. There's a lot of different reasons. Like, I do think, like, you should have your own bank account and like be responsible. But at the end of the day, if you're in a legal partnership, you will be responsible for that other person's assets if they're not able to manage it themselves or if something happens. So, you know, having awareness around that and like having a Big Mac, like, I like the macro picture, like a net worth tracker, just to kind of check in monthly about. Like, I do it with my own husband. We have, you know, I use the same tools that I use with my couples, like, use it in my own marriage. And it has been amazing because even during the downtimes, when the markets are down, like, maybe we didn't update it as Often as we would, but we had a clear understanding of where we're at and if any changes needed to be made or like, how we wanted to navigate it. And it has also brought us so much closer together because we truly feel like, even though we're working two different things, like, seeing our net worth rise has been, you know, helped to alleviate, like, these feelings of, like, low. Whether, like, feelings of low financial literacy or confidence because, you know, like, who's handling money really great? I don't know. You know, it's really helped in that capacity. And I've seen that so much for my, you know, my premarital couples of, like, getting them on this pathway to. To have these things in a financial dating life. Now for other couples that are, you know, could be a second marriage or, you know, where prenuptial agreements may fit, it really depends. It really is about conversations about that and what comes up for you when you hear prenuptial agreement, because for some people, it is about writing about divorce, you know, so you, you need to, you need, you need to understand where people are at prior to, you know, like, sitting down for that. Like, a lot of the, the processes I take my couples to do kind of ask, like, a lot of those questions, you know.

So you just kind of have to be careful to see where everybody's at. Like, some people are totally on board, like, oh, I get this, or I have previous property, or there's some, you know, familial components that will need to be, you know, maintained or preserved. And then for other people, it's a direct kind of attack on, you know, whether this is going to be.

Forever.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's. It's not a. It's just really about why you want to have the prenuptial agreement and what conversations can be had. Not necessarily to not have one, but to really solidify understanding, transparency, communication. And that this can be a powerful tool to protect both of you, especially if, you know, one person may be working outside of the house and the other person's working inside the house. So, you know, what does that look like? You probably want to have those conversations early on because you may have some things about already in your head about, like, what it'll be like, but we've never really communicated it to the other person. And that person doesn't necessarily have never thought of that. It's just like, well, I think it's going to be this way. Okay, well, that's great. Let's have this conversation now.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You Always talk about money being so emotionally charged. Right. I've never seen another document more emotionally charged than a prenuptial agreement, to be quite honest with you. This has been absolutely fascinating. I appreciate you sharing your stories with us. You know, just by talking to you and you're, you got to be an incredible financial therapist. How do people get a hold of you, Mariah, you know, let us know. And, and I, I go back to, I'm going to go on your website and I'm going to see if I can buy like gift certificates for people that are getting married because I'd rather have them instead of giving them, I don't know, plates and, and, or, or anything of a gift. You know, it's having them see you two or three times just to get started and get, and get the foundation, right, the financial foundation as a couple to have conversations. That would be amazing. Let us know where, how do we find you?

Sure, you can find me at Coru Financial Therapy and that's K O r u financial therapy.com or mariahorufinancialtherapy.com I do offer a free 20 minute consultation to make sure I can fit your needs and see if financial therapy is right for you. But yeah, I mean it just, it's really about reaching out and starting having the conversations. I love when people, you know, are brave enough just to even start the process and you know, if it's not, you know, if they're not looking particularly for sessions, you know, like resources like, you know, like assessing kind of where you're at and what you would benefit from because you know, my with, not everybody can access financial, like private, like financial therapy. But there's a whole, you know, there's a lot of other things that can be done to get you to where you need to be and to set you up with the right resources for that.

Fantastic, Wonderful. I appreciate you, I appreciate the time that you spend with us. Thank you so much. And I hope that, you know, anybody that's watching us or listening to us, you know, Mariah just offered their 20 minute free consultation. Reach out to her if you're having any kind of financial anxiety, stress or just want to make your life better and have more balance in your life when it comes to money. And we'll see you all next time. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Wealth Gap warriors podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. I love the show guys. You're awesome.

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