Mrs. DSO and I Talk About Money

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. Hello everyone, DSO here with the Dad Starting Over podcast, and with me today once again is the lovely and talented Mrs. DSO.

I get swirly cloud music now. No, I don't want that. No, I won't go back to the unicorn music. That's right, that's exactly me in essence.

Okay, we've already annoyed everyone. Uh, so like we do every time we come up with an idea for what are we going to talk about in podcast, now that you're here and you have time available, which is rare. For those that don't know, Mrs. DSO is a medical doctor. More specifically, she is a surgeon who operates on children, and that requires a great deal of her time, hours, and she is on call a lot. Like, half the time you're on call, which means you could get a call at 3 AM, "Please come and fix this kid, he needs you right now," and you gotta go. So to have you available for these is kind of a semi-rare treat. What are we doing, like once a month maybe?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Maybe. So anyway, thank you, Mrs. Díaz-O, for coming, but we were on a walk Yesterday, what are we going to talk about? And, um, do we want to do another one about sex? Yeah, maybe later, because that is, surprise surprise, the most popular podcast we've done so far is where we talked about our sex life.

But I thought, um, or we thought, all those pervs out there listening on that.

So we thought, let's talk about money, money, how we manage the whole money thing, joint finances, all that stuff. Getting kind of ahead of ourselves. Where to begin with this? We're not talking about the concept of money in general. We're not gonna get into economics here. What we're talking about is how we as a couple handle money, manage money, what's our philosophy on money.

Well, and how money can be a deal-breaker in a lot of relationships, as it was in my parents' relationship. And I told you about my friend Ayla and her husband and the stepkids yesterday on the walk.

Yes, I'm sorry, you threw me with the fake name because I'm like, oh shit, I do not remember an island. But yeah, okay, now I'm with you now. Yes, I think it's an issue, big issue.

I think just like sex, money can be destroying a marriage if it doesn't do— if it's not done right.

Here's the question: in general, do you think that if we were to poll people and say I guess people that are divorced— maybe that's not right— married people, rank these items in a typical relationship in, in, in terms of most important, that you two are on the same page. There's a good way of looking at it. And you could put sex and kids and money. Um, where do you think that ranks for men? Money. Where do you think money ranks for men versus women?

I would say it ranks higher for women than for men.

I would too, because— and it's, as I've often said on here, safety and security is paramount for women. And what makes you more safe and secure than having enough money in the bank and not spending it frivolously? And not— well, I say that because, um, when it comes to money, complaints I hear from men about their spouse is the wife is spending frivolously on stuff even though she's probably not bringing in money. In other words, it's kind of a coping mechanism for the woman. She's not getting what she needs out of life, etc., and it sure makes her feel good to buy those shoes. And the guy's like, we don't have money for the shoes. And then he discovers the wife has been racking up all kinds of debt. That's a common thing, but that— we're not talking about that necessarily. Yeah, but I agree, probably if you were to poll people, it'd be the women that come out ahead as far as money's a big, big thing for them, which is why sadly, and a lot of people, a lot of men that are really, oh, badly hurt by women and disenfranchised with the whole relationship thing will point to that fact that it's so important to women as kind of, well, there you go, that's all women care about. They're gold diggers, they're money grubbing, whatever. And to their point, a lot of the sad stories I hear from men that I talk to in divorce is, well, when did things start falling apart for you guys? I lost my job. Well, what happened? Well, I lost it, we got laid off, the company closed, and it took me like 6 months to find another job. And in that time, I saw my wife's respect for me go down. She was way too stressed about bills and everything else. Sex, forget it, that was way gone. And so I felt bad. I didn't feel wanted anymore, blah, blah, blah. Next thing you know, we're divorced and she's running off with some guy who makes a good income. When you look at that pragmatically, yeah, makes sense.

Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily shallow. I think it's shallow if a woman marries a guy for money so that she can go off and buy pretty purses and pretty shoes. That's shallow, obviously. But if If a woman marries and they plan to have kids and finds out the husband has the, you know, has been laid off or there's going to be a dip for a while in the income, for the woman, all those dreams and hopes and ideas go down, down the drain. Um, the way, the way at least that she put it in her head, you know, that doesn't mean that you can't have kids when you're short on the money, but what are we going to do for money?

Yes. What if people— this is a big one that really gets under a lot of men's skin— what are people going to think if they find out that my husband is unemployed and that we're having to skimp on things and we have to garage sale to pay the mortgage.

Well, just like the— yeah, but it's like the purses and the shoes for women. It's all about what do other people think of me and how does this look on the outside. We're social beings. We— it's important to us how our appearance is reflected by the others back to us. So I think as shallow as that may be, I don't necessarily think it's just shallow. I think it's just how we're wired.

It's just reality.

Yeah. And I, I would argue that I would feel the same way, that if you told me tomorrow, um, yep, this is all not working out and I'm not making any money anymore, and for the next year it's all going to be you. Oof, I'd have a hard time taking that. I'd feel super nervous and stressed and anxious. I don't know how you guys do that.

Yeah, versus if I were to come to you and say, this DSO thing didn't work out, I'm getting sued. Um, somebody out there calls himself DSO and he's got billions of dollars and he's suing me for copyright infringement. Just made that up, I don't know. So this DSO thing is done, I'm on to plan B. Um, I think to your point, I better have a plan B pretty quick. Yeah, at least on paper, and say, this is what I'm striving for. And I think you'd be like, well, look at this guy, he's been hit but he's still trying. Versus a lot of guys are, um, you know, this is— a lot of guys recognize what you're talking about, which is, um, yeah, it's a big freaking deal for us women. Which is why there's the sad, sad story of the man who gets fired or laid off from work, but he still, quote, goes to work and the wife has no idea. And all he does is go to a coffee shop and call one, you know, help wanted ads, or get on the phone and call his friends, or worst case, it's an parking lot all day and drinks. That makes me so sad, just because he knows what a mind-eff it's going to be and how much it's going to completely ruin his life. And he'll lose respect in the wife's eyes if he goes to her and says, I've lost my job.

On the flip side, we live in a time where women are sometimes the main breadwinners and where the pressure is a little bit off the guys. Because can you imagine in the '50s and '60s when the men were solely responsible for everything, the financial bills, any— and they couldn't even talk openly to their wives about it? And they just had to carry all that with them. If they lost their jobs, they lost everything. And nowadays, most of the time or a lot of the time, we share it 50/50 or the women actually put in a little bit more. So the pressure should be less and it should be more of a combined effort to get through life together, shouldn't it?

You would think so.

Yeah. Yet I think in perception, even if the woman is the main breadwinner, she'll still be like, well, dude, you need to, you know, you need to bring stuff too.

There's a story I put in one of my books of the— and I mentioned this on a previous podcast. Episode we did where one of my readers said, um, my wife worked at a big company which everybody in town wanted to work for. It was one of the big corporations in town, and but she wasn't— she was making okay money but not great money. I was actually— this is the guy talking— I was actually making more money than she was, but I didn't have a corporate job. I had several small jobs strung together which altogether made me more income, but she was still embarrassed Even though I made like, I think he made like twice what she did, she was still embarrassed to tell people, yeah, my husband does this thing and this other little thing and this other little thing versus he's the vice president of sales of Acme Company.

I know, you know, I have always a hard time explaining to people what you do. They always ask me, what does your husband do? First of all, why do people do that? Why do people ask what does your spouse do? Who cares?

It's a small talk thing.

It is, but it bothers me. It's stupid.

It really is because when you're sensitive about it, it's like, what does it matter what I do, dude? Who cares? I'm unemployed now. What, we have nothing in common? Are you done talking to me?

Yeah, I just don't get it.

You get it. You just— it's just a—

I get it. It's just a question like, hey, how's the weather?

Yeah, but you're also doubly in the weird thing of the dad starting over thing. Um, that could really rub some people the wrong way if they started looking into something.

I don't ever say anything like that. I just say you're life coach influencer person.

We need to work on this. We need a speech that you could just throw out there, boom boom.

Maybe, maybe I can just do like, he's an import and export.

I'm an importer exporter. Seinfeld restaurant reference. It's Vandelay Industries, we're in latex.

Okay, um, so, so can we talk about our finances?

Because yeah, I was going to say, so, you know, where we stand in the world of fill in the blank, anything, is based upon the baggage that we bring to the table, right? So when it comes to money, I know where I stand money-wise, and I saw where things got squirrely in marriage number 1. And I see— I am the very first to admit this— I am very prejudiced, right or wrong, but it's the fact I'm very prejudiced by the fact of all these hundreds of guys that I've spoken to and their stories of woe when it comes to finances and so forth and being married. So all that together, my own baggage, my mom and dad, my first marriage. And yeah, I come to the table with where I'm at now, which is very much of, um, what some people would say is probably a kind of selfishy non-traditional view on finances and marriage. And I think fortunately you probably agree 99% with that.

And interestingly, because I too have a history, my parents had a horrible financial situation where My mom got dragged into financial mishaps and it basically ate up all our— my— basically my, my, uh, what is it called, my estate, her estate, whatever I will inherit.

Whatever nest egg she had of money.

Yeah, exactly. It was just gone.

Well, what you saw was, not to go into too much detail, but what you saw was one parent being dependent upon the other for their well-being, and that parent, the, the earner, let them down. And things got very hairy.

They're not just— they— no, no, no. So what I saw was people marrying each other for money. My mom married a man because she thought he was wealthy. My stepdad was like stupid wealthy at some point in the '70s, and so she saw him at— on the downfall of that, but didn't realize it was the downfall. And, um, she saw this man who owned a hotel and had, you know, had flights to haircuts— flights for haircuts to Paris and buy shoes in New York, flying there with the Concorde, like that kind of stupid—

that kind of level of wealth.

And, uh, so she met him, she was like, oh, this guy is going to take care of me and my kid, because my mom was an elementary school teacher. And so she was worried about not being able to finance my life and her life. And so she married him. And he— because my mom came from money, he saw her backup. And my mom is always very well dressed and always very stylish. And so she looks much more wealthy than she is.

She fits the part.

Yeah. And so he was like, oh, I'm going to marry this woman who comes from old money. And so they both— I'm sure they married each other for love too, but they just felt that they had a great deal there. And what happened is my mom relied on his money a great deal. Um, and at the end it turned out that his company wasn't doing well at all. They went bankrupt. But then what then happened is he had her co-sign a loan to save his company and dragged— like, I think there was hundreds of thousands that he, he pulled out of her account. That was pretty much all the money she had from her parents. And, um, so I think that just didn't go well. And, uh, I, I was in the middle of all that watching the, the misery that came out of that, the bitterness, the hate, and just see two people that were already having a difficult marriage, but they were falling apart over this. Then I had my own first marriage too, and, um, I had a slightly selfish ex-husband who was always about, why should I pay for anything that you do? Why should I give you any money? And, um, I think I learned from that for our next marriage, for my next marriage, for this marriage.

Next.

So we, uh, I remember when we, um, when we were talking about getting married, it wasn't even difficult to bring up how to deal with that. I think it was just kind of very matter of fact. Hey, we know this can fail. The statistics are against us. Let's just make sure we're both comfortable with how we divvy up our finances. And the big thing that comes in here, and I think that's a very common scenario today with the, with the blended families, is that you had 3 kids and I had no kid. And my biggest concern was, what if I somehow get dragged into, you know, your ex-wife's business and having to take care of your kids financially? Neither do I want to, nor I mean, I might want to, but I didn't want to be forced into that. I had just worked my butt off to get financially where I was, and when I met you as a fellow, I wasn't making much.

Yeah, it was interesting, the dynamic of our, um, uh, relationship when we first met was I wasn't making a lot. I was okay, um, but I, um, pretty good with— this is kind of a— this is a side topic we can table for later, but it was On paper, how much did I make? Roughly less than half of what I make now I made then when we first met, but I had more money in the bank then as single newly divorced guy. How funny. And you needed some help with like moving for your first job and stuff, and I helped bankroll, you know, here's, you know, you need this much for moving, you need this much for this, you need some stuff, and you were still coming out of that fellowship and not making a whole heck of a lot. So yeah, I'll help you out. Here you go. And you paid all that right back to me, so it wasn't like a free loan or something.

It was easy on an attending salary though.

And yeah, so once you got your paychecks, here you go, write me a check. So thank you very much. Now not so much. I'm making over twice as much, but how much do I have in the bank? If you were to say I need help moving, I'd be like, eh.

That's because you have a very costly wife.

Thank you. I was going to—

I mean, that Valentine's Day present was pretty—

You kind of painted a picture of your family being coming from old money, but to your credit, I don't want to say you didn't get a penny of that.

I didn't get much, thanks to my stepdad.

Yeah. You may be able to look at your uncle and say, "Look at him, he's got this big company," and so forth, but that hasn't really helped you along the way. You did all that yourself by virtue of you went to medical school, which where you come from in Europe was covered by It's financed by the taxes. Yeah.

So med school was completely free.

Her university, medical school, everything was free. And then she comes to the States for the training and she worked all through those years, went through a marriage as a result of that, got divorced, and now here she is an attending physician in year number what of being an attending? Is this year 5?

It's the 6th year.

This is the 6th year of being an attending. So you've made your own thing. You've earned your keep, so to speak. We're not talking about some kept woman here, right?

No, but what I think here— what helped with that was that I grew up in an aura of money. There was a lot of people— my— all my friends were wealthy, way wealthier than my parents. Were never wealthy. They just had that, you know, because my mom came from money, she was used to a certain standard of living, and so she somehow kept it up on the outside. What I didn't know as a kid was that my mom would party and clean in the same estates. Like, she would go to very, very nice houses, be friends with those people, would show up at the parties. But then what I didn't know was that during the week she would clean their houses.

Wow, isn't that funny? So she, she is from the outside looking in, if you don't know, she fit the part of, well, that's a well-to-do woman, right?

Yes, totally.

Yeah. But to her credit though, she wasn't above saying, hey, by the way, when I leave your party—

oh, she worked hard her whole life—

leave the mess, I'll clean it up. You pay me $100, I'll clean up the Yes.

And that's what I think— that's what I learned from my mom. My mom learned how to, how to live both the life of rags and riches. Like, she— we would go to the fanciest hotels in Paris, but we wouldn't live there. We would just go there for tea time and look like all the fancy people.

Live there, you mean you wouldn't stay in the room?

Yeah, we wouldn't stay at the hotel. We just go to the tea time, look fancy, and then go to the cheaper hotel down the road.

Um, but a person like me who comes from— my mother was poor in Europe, my father came from basically white trash in America, but they both made something of themselves as a result. A person like me from my background looks at that and just kind of rolls my eyes that there's some people playing the part. Why bother? Do you look at that as it was kind of a silly time of going through those motions of—

I think it was. I think it was very shallow on my mom's end, but I think she defined herself by being able to keep that up on the outside because she didn't have much else that she accomplished in life. That's a horrible thing to say, but That's just how she felt, I think. And I liked it because I think it showed me both. I'm now comfortable camping with, you know, pooping in the woods, but I'm also just as comfortable going to the 5-star resort and I know how to work the people there.

Let me pause you there. Have you pooped in the woods?

Yes, I actually have.

You're one up on me there.

I was with the girls Scouts.

That doesn't really count. Girl Scouts.

I've pooped in the woods since then. It's been a while.

Are we talking like there was an outhouse?

No, there was like a beam across, like there was a hole in the ground.

Oh, there's a hole in the ground. I'm just not like you're like a, like a bear out there.

Just— no, no, that's good.

Why are we talking? Because this is so not you that I cannot imagine you just do that.

Like, well, I mean, if you poop—

but I like how you when you— to illustrate the two, the two endpoints here. One is, I can slum it with the rest. You could have said like, man, I could drink a beer in a dive bar, or— but no, you picked, I could take a shit outdoors like anybody else. I'm like, wait, what?

Well, I'm German.

This is true. Here we go. It always comes back to shit with you guys.

All right, moving on. So how do we do our finances?

Okay. So now we have a feeling for the flavor of baggage that you bring and how that has colored your perception of money. My perception was one of my mom and dad were never frivolous, but my dad was way more impulsive with money than mom was to where he'd be like, "Look, new computer." New computer is not a frivolous thing, but my mom at the time, I remember—

In the '90s it was.

Well, yeah. I remember my mom at the time was just rolling her eyes like, "Ah." Of course, you know, God forbid we save this. Well, at the time they were pricey, like probably 2 grand or something like that for a computer. At the CD-ROM, I remember was a huge deal at the time. Um, that's the first thing that sticks out of my mind is something that my mom rolled her eyes at. My mom is, um, by virtue of her neuroses and so forth, is extremely conservative with money. But to her credit, she's also the type that, uh, you know you're in some life moment, you're getting married or something like that, and she writes you a big fat check that makes you go, oh shit, I had no idea this woman is the type of person to have this kind of money. What the hell? She's like, yeah, I never spend it. She worked really hard. She was an accountant. So there you go. So I grew up with an ultra financially, fiscally conservative person who was an accountant. They knew in and out, here's how you save, here's what you spend and don't spend, here's how you deal with taxes and don't deal with taxes versus the guy who's just kind of like, "Hey, look, a computer. I want it." I learned from the two of them and they probably both were— my father really wasn't a huge spender to the point of being— we weren't in the poorhouse or anything like that, but he probably could have turned it down a little bit. My mom sure could have loosened up a little bit. That's what I bring to the table and I probably lean more towards my mom in that regard. Would you agree?

Yeah, I would agree, which is good because I lean more towards your dad.

To where you're like, why don't you just buy that thing? And I'm just like, because I can't afford it. And you're like, yeah, you can. No, I could write a check for that thing, but I don't want to. I'd much prefer to hang on to that $500 or whatever. Um, and you see, when I get clothes, I wear those clothes until they're worn out. And like, oh shit, I guess I gotta get another pair of pants. Um, that's just me. I would love to line the walls in this office with cool guitars, and I'm looking at them all the time on YouTube, but then I look at that and I go, it's It's only $600, but that's $600, you know. And I'm self-employed now. That's another thing, being fully, basically completely self-employed now. Really, you don't know if tomorrow's gonna be a $10,000 day or tomorrow's gonna be a $10 day.

Just more risk.

And so when you look and see $600 guitar, I think I'll just hang on to that $600.

But I mean, that goes for anything in life, you know. Tomorrow we could have a a major crash, economy crash. Um, inflation is already terrible. I mean, there's— you just don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. The next pandemic might be around the corner, who knows. Um, so I think it's extremely smart to pile up your money as much as you can. And, and I, I did both. I, I used to live from paycheck to paycheck. Um, I remember counting my bills when I was in med school, trying to figure out how many days I could live on ramen. And now, like when I started having my salary, in the beginning I was like, oh, I want to save it all because it's so nice to see it grow in the bank account. And I still love that feeling because, you know, tomorrow your car breaks down and you don't have to cry about it and you just fix it and move on with life. And I think that's an extremely important thing to have.

That's a good thing. So we both agree that money is not necessarily— money doesn't buy happiness, but it sure as hell makes things easier.

It buys you a security blanket.

Yeah, not in terms of I get to buy those cool Yeezys, which I, by the way, bought, which is awesome. You can afford to. You wanted the Yeezys, awesome. I'm a sneakerhead, so hey, that's cool. But in terms of I don't have to do fill in the blank because I have money, I don't have to worry about fill in the blank because I have money. Oh shit, the market tanked. That's fine. I don't have a car payment anymore. Or even to me, the pinnacle would be I own my house free and clear. Wow, how cool would that be? And how unusual that would be just to have all that money in equity in the bank and I have that monthly payment coming out every month. That kind of stuff. So what I just said there is pretty fiscally conservative and we both agree on that. We both shake our heads like, yeah, that would be pretty cool to pay off the house. But at the same time, You are more of the—

High maintenance, just say it.

High maintenance in terms of—

I like my purses.

Well, that and, hey, let's go on a cruise to Europe.

Yeah, let's go on a safari in Africa.

Which is great, and I'm all for it, which we are going on here soon. But I tell you, if you left it to me, would I have thought of that? It would be in the back of my mind. I know the concept of cruises, I know the concept of travel, but to throw that together and spend all that money for us to go, I'd probably be like, I got other things to worry about.

But that's where I think some of my upbringing plays in, but also my approach of YOLO, you know.

Exactly. You're more of the dude, you can't take the money with you.

No, you can't. And I think you have to take some money with you, but you also make memories. And as we get older, our days are very precious. Our kids are moving out and you want to have to make memories with them.

That was something that was sorely lacking for me as a kid, is I had a dad who was traveling for the military a lot. So he would be, you know, he went to Turkey. For like 4 months and then came home. And then he went to Norway for 2 months and, you know, all these weird bases that the Air Force sent him to where he'd go for these projects and come back. And none of them was— one was active duty, that was when we went to war with Iraq. He had to go over there for a little while. So maybe that made him kind of hesitant about, oh great, more travel? I don't think so. So when he was home, he was home and he's like, ah, and you know, my mom, she's not gonna be one like, hey, let's go. No, she's—

your mom came from Spain, so she probably didn't have the, like, a huge interest in going to Spain all the time.

No, but I, you know, in listening to her family, they were relatively poor, so they weren't jumping over to France, although she had one sister who lived there, another one had moved to Germany, another one that moved everywhere. So, but she did— she wasn't eager like, let's go to these national parks, let's go do this. I remember hearing from friends like We went to Glacier National Park. We went to Yosemite. And I was like, why don't we do that? We did end up going to Disney once when I was a kid, and we went to Mammoth Cave National Park, which was just a few hours' drive from Indiana. That's all I remember. Well, I went to Spain as a kid with my mom during a few summers, so that's pretty big, right?

For you.

I got to stay there for months at a time, to the point where I was picking up the language. You know, that's kind of cool, which is where my— I think I meant, yeah. Where my mom's from, Spain. So I got to see all my family there. So, but relatively blah. Extravagant? No. We lived in a shitty little house when I was a kid that we were— my— we moved into a house that cost, I remember, $20,000. Oh wow. But— and this is kind of a— I almost get a little emotional talking about it because it was such a— it was such an impactful thing as a kid that I was embarrassed by our home because it was so shitty. Um, because it was a $20,000 home that they bought because my dad was Mr. Remodel Guy, and he looked at it and said, this house has good bones, good structure. It's old, but look at this thing. They don't build houses like this anymore. We're gonna gut the thing and we're gonna put in this and new rooms. And to his credit, he did with his own hands and me helping and spending hours and hours on it. But it was very stressful and it took 9 years.

Yeah, but how awesome is that? You built it 9 Yeah, but all your blood and sweat is in it.

My childhood went into— I remember rooms in our house were blocked off with plastic. You don't go there because that's being worked on. Um, the kitchen's being worked on right now, so we're— the bathroom for running water.

That would drive me nuts.

And this was something that— boy, we're really going off on a tangent here— but this was something that you and I have talked about where kids these days are very much shown again and again, you are number one in this family. You kid. We will move hell and high water to, to provide for you, kid. And if you kid want to go to travel all over the country for your sport or whatever, I'll go with you. We as a family will do that. We will pay for all this thousands of dollars and stay in hotels and travel in the caravan of vehicles. That's foreign to me. I— the concept when I was a kid, the image was very much of you're the kid and you kind of come after mom and dad, bottom of the food chain, definitely bottom of the food chain.

And yeah, that's the same with me. I just had to kind of follow along.

And so that remodeling the house for 9 years, guess whose room became dead last?

Yours.

I had to sleep on the couch for a good amount of time because we were working on my house. So that was— the image was it sucked. I was embarrassed for the house being always worked on. It was really shitty at the beginning. They got better and the house actually looked really nice towards the end, but just living in that condition, and it was very frugal. My dad never paid a person to come in and do anything. He did the plumbing, the electrical. We even ripped up the floor joists and put all new floors in. For construction guys listening to that, they're like, wow, that's pretty big deal. Reframed everything, all new, everything in there. But it took— that was my whole childhood.

But that explained— I didn't know that about you. See, after all these years, that's it. Never in this much detail. I, um, it explains now why you're so much more tolerant of chaos around you than I am. Like, I have zero, zero— like, if there's a painting on the wall that's crooked, I lose my marbles. And you are just fine with that. Because you grew up.

But I'm pretty big on cleaning a lot. I'm always sweeping.

I'm always working. You're always working.

You're never sitting still. I'm always doing that because it's— this house we're in right now is the nicest place I've ever lived in in my entire life. And I pay a lot of money every month to live here. And so I'm very proud of it and I want to take care of it. And if I see dirt on the floor, crumbs on the floor, which with 3, 4 kids, it's always crumbs.

Yes.

I'm always cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. So you get a flavor of the baggage that I bring to the relationship.

Yes. So we kind of went off on a tangent. You're right. But hey, it paints a picture of where we're at, right?

Because all this has to do with money.

Yeah.

Why did my parents buy a shitty home when I was a little kid for $20,000 and fix it up, etc., etc.? Well, money. Why did you end up going for the career that you did? Was money a big factor?

No, actually it wasn't. I went into my career because I really genuinely was passionate about the, the science behind it. I just was completely excited about learning everything about the human body.

Why didn't you go for like a professorship?

I did consider, uh, going more into microbiology or genetics. But then in med school, you rotate through all the services and departments. And I just love the idea of the quick fixing. You know, the surgeon hero comes in. And I'm a crafty person. I love crafts. I love working with my hands. So I just love being in the operating room. It can be 5 hours of operating. It feels like 10 minutes to me. It's just the place I want to be. But again, so I never thought of money. When I went into medical school, the first day of medical school, they actually told us, half of you won't get a job. You will never really make much money because in Germany as a physician you don't really make a lot of money. Um, if we're definitely not the top earners. And here that was just kind of— I was just fortunate that I ended up staying here and ended up getting a job here. And here it's very different. But to be honest, yes, I make about 8 times as much as I would have made as a German physician.

Really?

Oh yeah, it's ridiculous. But I would— I'm— I feel like I'm just as poor as I would be over there because here childcare costs— yes, the cost of living is just so much higher here. Everything costs more. And well, let's put it this way, I think the cost of living can be just fine if you don't want to live on a European level. But I want, you know, I want to live like I live in Europe. So I want my organic produce, I want my— I want everything to just feel right. I want my, you know, my fixtures to be good sturdy stuff. I want my houses to be sturdy and not those, you know, those cute little toothpick constructions you guys do. I want like a house made of stone. And so I have these these ideas of how things should be because I grew up in a different culture. And so that is obviously a lot more expensive. And so I feel like the standard of living that I'm used to is just higher here. Sorry, it's, it's, it's more costly here. And that's why I feel like I'm still not making enough. But again, we're losing what we want to talk about because we still have to talk about Ayla and her situation. So, so we both, we talked about it, right? Pretty emotionless. We just said, hey, 'How do we— should we talk about prenup?

Should we do this or not?' So those that don't know, prenup is short for prenuptial agreement, which is basically a piece of paper that you sign with an attorney that says, 'In the event that this marriage doesn't work out, here's what happens with our money. Do you agree?' 'Yes.' 'Then sign here.' 'Great, done.' Now to me, just what I described there is a pretty pragmatic, rational— well, who the hell wouldn't want to do that kind of thing? And why I wish I would have done that in marriage number one, to be honest with you, knowing what I know now. But let's be honest, I, in full transparency, I was not screwed over in marriage number one. It was a fair split. Now, the case could be made of a split of debts where half went to me, half went to her. Who was responsible for 90% of that debt? Probably her. But hey, it is what it is, and I get it, and whatever. But assets were also split, so I came out smelling pretty good out of that compared to a lot of these—

some other— yeah.

Um, but I, as I mentioned very early on in this, it was also colored by all of these stories I hear from all these other guys of, dude, let me tell you how bad it could get. I mean, I heard story— I probably— the, the stereotypical bad story I hear from men is, um, I provided for this woman, I really helped her get ahead in life, I paid for schooling, I paid for this, I paid for that, and I did everything by the book as far as I'm concerned, and in the end she left me for for this guy over here, the pool boy, whatever it is. And because of that, I have lost my home, my retirement, my savings, legal fees. I am wiped out as a result. And you hear that, you know, I mean, I don't care who you are, you hear that 500 times like I probably have, eventually it sinks in and you go, shit, is there a way to, you know, hedge my bets and, you know, mitigate and prevent this from happening to me? And that's where the law comes in and says Yeah, there's something called a prenuptial agreement, which is probably not completely ironclad and 100% safe, but it's something that says, hey, in the event that this doesn't work out for whatever reason, here's what happens to money. So I'm like, sign me up.

And those of you who think that's either highly unromantic or extremely unchristian, I hear you guys.

How—

why on earth would you, in the same sentence as you talk about getting married for life, also talk about, hey, what— but what happens if you don't end up being together for life. That's just the worst, really the worst thing you can do. It just doesn't come across well. So if it doesn't already come up in conversation naturally, it's also a really difficult thing to bring up. Like, hey, will you marry me? Yeah, here's your ring. So you want to talk about finances now? So there's just no way to bring that up.

Yeah. In the event that this doesn't work out— What do you mean it doesn't work out? Are you—

What?

No, I'm just saying you never know what— Now let's say this, I just spelled out the worst case, which is one of the people says adiós, I'm going to go with a different partner, thank you very much, I'll be taking all your money. But there are other things that could happen that could cause you to split up. What if one of you became—

Sick?

Well, hit by a bus and goes away. Well, do you have all your finances taken care of in terms of insurance, in terms of who pays what, and do you have money that's going to come to you? And if that money does come to you, how is it supposed to be dispersed? That's kind of a— that's a not as—

Loaded.

Yeah, loaded. Very good. Yeah, not as loaded thing. It seems pretty cut and dry for many people. Actually, good segue. It's not so cut and dry because your friend whose fake name we used was—

Ayla.

Ayla. She had a discussion with her now husband who comes to the table with 2, 3 kids?

3 kids.

3 kids from a previous marriage. She makes more money than him as a medical professional. The topic of, "Hey, if something happens to you, what do we do with this chunk of money that you have coming to you?" Much to his chagrin, she was kind of like, "Well, I'm not paying for your kids if that's what you're thinking." Well, here's another thing to add.

She has her own kids. They married and then they had one kid and actually the second one is on the way.

All right.

She says, "I worked hard to get where I am and I worked hard for my kid. I didn't work for some other person's kids. Plus, those 3 kids have a parent, a set of parents, so they are taken care of. Why would they need a third parent to financially provide for them?

And he— I, I don't know them well at all, having only met them a couple times, but he comes across to me as probably the more soft of the 2.

He's very laid back.

And so I could see him being hurt by that, like, whoa, 'You want to take care of my kids? What the hell?' Which was kind of his reaction, was it not?

I think it was. He was a little bit disappointed. And, um, I think they found a kind of middle ground by saying the life insurance that she set up is going to him, and then he obviously can do whatever he wants with it instead of her kid. Like, she could have written out the life insurance to her kid, uh, but she's probably—

as an aside, dude, 'Take care of our two kids primarily, please.' Who knows? But yeah, don't go.

But I think they found somewhat of an agreement. But, uh, I don't necessarily think he, he was mad about it, but he was just probably a little bit, um, surprised that she wasn't embracing, um, financially also taking care of the kids. But I think he's understanding, given especially that now they're having two kids, that she would want to save primarily for them.

And the general theme of their relationship, as far as what we hear from her secondhand is, uh, this doesn't surprise me to hear that. This has always been kind of the tone between the two of them where she's kind of resentful of the three kids.

She's not resentful, but she just got into their lives when they were teenagers, and I don't think there's anything harder than that, entering the attention stepkids in their teenage—

it was a little much. And like, he was like, hey, teenagers over again. And she's like, I thought this was our day, you know. I thought they were with mom today. Well, they wanted to come, so I said yeah, please come on over. And she's like, you could have asked me first.

Yeah, like a wedding anniversary, he runs off to the soccer national championship with his teenage daughter, and she's like, "It's just a soccer game, dude." And he's like, "Yeah, but it's the soccer game." So I think there was also— she's from a different country, so I think there was also a cultural issue there. But I think I can understand where she's coming from, and I also understand where he's coming from, because he wants his kids taken care of, and his ex-wife isn't necessarily the most trustworthy, and he's a little worried about her part of the deal. And so I think he, as every dad, he just wants to make sure his 3 kids are taken care of. So they, the 2 of them found a solution where they established a shared account that they both use and no questions asked. And he definitely uses it to pay for stuff for the kids. But the catch here is, is that she making more money every month pays off that account on a regular basis just so that they don't ramp up interest charges. And indirectly ends up paying for a lot of the stuff for the kids. And so she's super resentful about the fact that, you know, a kid throws this— throws this iPhone on the ground by accident, it has a crack, he needs a new iPhone. Dad goes and buys it with the credit card that they share, and then stepmom pays off the credit card and sees, oh, there's a $600 charge for a new iPhone. What, what the heck? Nobody told me about this.

Yeah, see, to me that's— that's a no-no. I would really crack down on— if I were her in that regard, like, no, we need to talk about this shit first before you just go spinning.

Like, yeah, she said she didn't want to bring it up because she doesn't want to come across as petty, but it bothered her a lot.

Well, there you go. Yeah, I mean, it's marriage 101.

You got it. But see, this is the thing, that'll come up 5 years from now. Exactly. But that's the thing, that is why finances is unromantic and as unchristian as it is, but it's a reality that there's going to be struggles along the road and you have to discuss beforehand, especially if you're in a blended family, how you want to do it. It doesn't have to be right after you pop the question and slip that ring on her finger, but I think If you decide to marry somebody, you're, you're gonna have to be comfortable to have the difficult conversations. If you tick somebody off with wanting to have a conversation about it, that's not a good sign either.

I don't think so either, but that's our little worldview, and that's because of the baggage we bring based upon our first relationships, our mom and dad and everything else. A lot of people don't have that. A lot of people have the very traditional conservative of my mom stayed home and took care of the kids and my dad worked worked really hard, 80 hours a week, whatever it is. And, um, that kind of shit was never talked about. It was— if my mom worked some little part-time job on the side or whatever, she threw it into a pool of their bank account and they just paid for everything together. And it was never— there was never a question of who put this $5 in.

But that's very different because mom—

yeah, the point could be made that that doesn't apply to these.

No, there's— that's an unspoken— like, that scenario where it's your first marriage, you meet young, you both are poor or, you know, just fresh out of college or whatever you've just done, and you start from scratch, both of you, and you build something together and you both put your part in, whether that's mom staying home raising the kids or dad staying home or whatever you guys do, but you build your life together. And I would argue that hopefully both put equal amounts of work in, whatever that means. But I think giving birth to children and raising them and building your social network and making cakes for birthday parties and all that crap, that counts too, and it's just as much as going to work every day counts and keeping a job for so many years. So I think that dividing that up 50/50 is the best solution you can have if that marriage ever falls apart, because there's no way you can put that on scales and say, well, he— she worked— she, she didn't work ever, and she didn't really bake any cakes for the kids, so I don't think she deserves that much money. And Yeah, so you can't—

you're getting a weird little gray area there.

You can't do that.

And, and then there's the whole question of, well, let's say that in that scenario the woman runs off with the pool boy. Is she still due all of the money as Miss Homemaker for 20 years in the relationship and taking care of the kids and everything else? Is all that negated by the fact that she just said, hey, I'm running off the pool boy now?

No, it's not.

Exactly. Some, some men, you know, caught up in that would say, hell yeah, she— that negates everything as far as I'm concerned. Well, the law, as far as they're concerned, no, it doesn't. I can't imagine a more horrible fate than to go through that and then end up having to pay like $2,000 a month to this woman for alimony, child support, and then losing your house and losing your savings and your retirement and everything else. That would really turn you— and those guys are like, prenup, absolutely, why the hell wouldn't you do that? So if— let's say this, you're with a woman and you guys have been together for years and you're ready to pop the question and she's very underemployed, so to speak, compared to you. Excuse me. Or hell, switch the genders and he's, he's very underemployed. Whatever, partner 1, partner 2. And, um, you go, okay, but here's the deal. Um, after seeing what my mom and dad went through, after seeing what my friends went through, tell me your thoughts. Be honest with me. What do you think about the whole prenup thing? Because that's what I'm leaning more towards. Let's let's do a prenup before we get married. And then partner 2 says, um, oh hell no, if you do that, we're done. That right away makes me go, uh-oh, why are they so vehemently against that?

Exactly. Are they not wanting to put their part in into the marriage, or what is the deal with that?

There was a very, um, but you hinted at it when you talked about the Christian thing. We don't want to limit it to just our Christian listeners, so to speak, but that's, that's the world we know when we think of traditional conservative people. They come from the Christian faith, but I'm sure this applies to people that you're Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, and so forth. They're very similar in their, in their look at marriage and all this. And you have very strict what it means to be married. And I would assume that those religions probably all the same way. Prenup? What are you doing? No, no, that's, that's not the way to do things. You're starting off on the wrong foot already.

Well, that's heretic. But, and I agree, I mean, I find it extremely sad that we even have to talk about that because when you marry someone, isn't the plan that you grow old together and that you go through thick and thin and everything together? So I agree, setting up a prenup negates all that indirectly. You know, basically says, yes, I'm promising all this, but just in case. What does that mean? You just said through sickness and through health and poor and all that, and then you just say, oh yeah, but only if there's a prenup, I will go through all of that with you. And so I understand why it would create a lot of tension. But at the same time, I'm still going to say, if you're a couple and you're deciding to get married, you probably already had some difficult conversations about that. And you, you should, you should have already aligned your values or distinguished or just talked about where your values may be different and what you expect from one another. So I think those are very adult conversations that you need to have before you get married.

And here's an interesting question. I wonder if, uh, difficult thing to measure, but if you were to look at two different populations and you said the one where the woman makes far less or is way underemployed or doesn't work and is entering into a relationship with a man and the man says prenup, I wonder what her— those— that group, Group A, the reaction would be compared to your example where the woman is very gainfully employed and has a lot to to lose, what would Group B's reaction be? I have a feeling women in your position are way, way, way more apt to say, oh yes, prenup, yes, where do I sign? Yes, let's go now, let's get this. Because there is, whether right or wrong, this is just something I've noticed and every man has noticed. When you have a woman who is an earner, she, even though she may be CEO of some company and breaking in millions bonuses she still has a very hard time paying for, as your friend talked about. Um, I don't want to take care of him if I don't have to. Certainly not going to take care of kids from previous marriage. I'm not going to fund some hobby of his. If he likes to go skydiving or whatever, he's going to pay for that. For whatever reason, by virtue of our biology, culture, whatever it is, men seem to be more apt to, yes, I will just pay for whatever. Yes, fine. Much to our detriment from what I've seen.

Yeah.

So when I hear these stories of this man and the— what the common storyline goes, um, I married this woman who had all this baggage galore and she just came to this relationship with just all kinds of horribleness. And she— this past relationships of abuse and her mom and dad, she was sexually abused and she was abandoned and it was just horrible, terrible thing, but I got in a relationship with her anyway. And then I married her and I'm like, "Ugh." And then we had 2 kids, I'm like, "Ugh." And then she decided she wanted to go to nursing school and I paid for the whole thing. And then she decided she wanted to go into some kind of little side business thing and I paid for that too. I hear this again and again and again. And I paid for it and I paid for it and I paid for it. And the men just feel like a sense of honor doing that. Wow, I get to help this woman realize her dreams and how awesome of me.

I don't—

whatever that gene is called, Provider gene. That provider gene. For some reason, you ladies are kind of lacking in that. And you guys are— you guys, you ladies are much more apt to kind of raise your hand and go, "Uh, excuse me, I don't think so." Yeah, I don't know if necessarily a gene or just a cultural thing.

We just were raised being the princess that, you know, that you guys provide for. And we were just sitting there looking pretty and you guys saved us in all those Disney movies. So I think it's not necessarily something we're born with, wanting to be taken care of. It's more something we're We race to sink.

So Suzanne Venker, I know she listens to this podcast. Be curious, Suzanne, if you're listening to this, we can talk about this later. If your clientele, I know which consists of a lot of professional women, do you find that they are very pro-prenuptial agreement? Be curious to see what she says about that. She has— she's a good, uh, good barometer for what that culture—

my friend Isla, who is a medical professional, when I told her that we did have a prenup She almost fell off her chair on the other end of the phone. She was like, why? What? You did? And, uh, and I said yes, because I, I, I made a lot of sacrifices along the way. I didn't have kids very early on.

I, you know, knowing her and her disposition, that surprises me that she'd be able to say what she's so pragmatic. Oh hell yeah.

Yeah, but no, you know, a lot of my friends and all of a lot of them, I would say most of my girlfriends are now— she either the breadwinners or she was pretty high on the food chain. Yeah, she's Muslim.

Not—

so she's pretty— no, but she's, she's practicing, but she doesn't cover up and she doesn't— no, but she goes to mosque every weekend with her kid and she does cover up for that.

There's a religious component there.

Yeah, good point. And she is, uh, from an African country too.

She's a, uh, African— technically an African-American.

Well, yeah, she came here when she was 11. I guess that counts.

African-American Muslim married to an extremely Caucasian man from the Northeast, snowy Northeast. So interesting. But that doesn't surprise me when you think about her background. Like, yeah, I can see that shit, the baggage that she brings to the— and when you say baggage, I don't necessarily mean a whole bunch of negative stuff. I just mean the stuff she brings to the relationship includes that religious component.

But see, So how do you think that you and I are doing with money, how we manage money, how we talk about money now that we're almost 5 years into this marriage?

I think we're doing all right. Yeah, I think I'm— my being extra ultra conservative with money, I have to loosen that leash quite a bit, especially considering the amount of flying I have to do. Which is, well, once a month.

It adds up.

Every now and then twice a month. That's thousands a year extra that I wouldn't spend, which adds other little things, which adds I have to buy something for over here that I also have for over there, and it sounds silly, but it adds up. And we—

we have a whole set of two bedrooms for the baby, pretty much.

Yeah, and you are the type of person that You're not going to be happy 5 days a week just sitting and watching some Netflix. Some gal growing up in Indiana her whole life would be like, that sounds like a dream to me. Well, you're like, you know, I think we can get a babysitter for the baby on Thursday and go to this place and spend a couple hundred bucks on dinner. Yeah, that adds up.

I agree. That's unfortunately what I do, or the whole You know, and this is, I think, where I think we do it naturally fairly is when it comes to those vacations, because you would be fine just going to Florida every year.

I don't know.

I don't think you would necessarily. No, you just said that the other day.

Here's my thing. Being fine means I wouldn't— I think men overall are easier to where we say, am I going to die if I go to Florida every year? No. Wow, how terrible. I get to see the beautiful beach. We've been to like, what's That's the place that we live.

Seaside.

Seaside. It's awesome.

Yeah, it is. Beautiful there.

Yeah. And the beach is like immaculate and we're just like, wow, we had no idea this was here.

It's very pretty.

Compared to Destin, which is just like the Walmart of Florida.

Yeah, but still a pretty beach. Yeah.

Yeah. But anyway, yeah, just threw Destin under the bus there. But anyway, yeah, I'm— my friend Dave often makes fun of me and he often says that I'm the guy that always says Yeah, I like it okay.

Yeah, I make fun of that too.

Yeah, I'm not super strict of— God, fucking— there are some things I hate, but it's few. And there are some things that make me go, oh, holy shit, this is amazing, but it's just a few. I'm not one to go apeshit either way on stuff.

Well, that's because you haven't been to the Maldives overwater villas.

But for the most part, whatever you throw at me, I'm like, I like it, cool. So if you said, "All right, here's the deal, dude. This is the only place you'll ever vacation from now until the day you die." I'd be like, "Oh, yeah, all right, that's fine.

That's me." At least I get a vacation is what you would do.

Yeah, what, do I have my health? Yes, you have your health. And sunny, sun hitting me in my face? Yeah. And it's warm?

Yeah.

Wow, sounds like I'm living like a king. It's cool with me.

Yeah, but when you tell me we're going to go to Florida for the rest of our lives every year, I would like, I'd rather die.

Okay, so a little different because you look at it like, "But I want to go to Rome." But I want to go to Maldives.

Well, but I've been to 30 countries in my life.

Yeah, so you're well-traveled.

I know there's stuff out there. It's not so much about I'm fancy and I need to know. I just am hungry to see this planet.

Yeah, and I've been to almost every state in this country and I've been into Europe. Is that it? Oh, Canada. South America, Europe, all of— almost every state due to my work travels. And so it's almost like, almost have been there, done that. And do I have this hungry need? There are places I would love to go to and always have a checklist. I want to go to Italy and Greece, and I want to go to— I would love to see the pyramids in Egypt, which everyone tells me you're gonna be— total letdown, you're gonna be disappointed, dude, don't do it. But I was— they have some new museums, the Valley of the Kings, you can do that. New museums there look amazing. I've always been a huge Egypt nut ever since I was a little kid, so I love to go do that. So yeah, I have those little things, but I guess I'm a pretty simple dude when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Yeah, but you— so back to that. So first of all, you are a simple dude, but I have totally introduced you to the good stuff.

Yeah, that's true.

And the other thing, but you also, and that's how I love— what I love about our relationship is you also have made me more I think financially responsible in my thinking. I remember when we met first, you told me, you can't just live from paycheck to paycheck, girl. Like, you have to put some money on the side. I was like, what? No, then I can't, you know, buy this and this. And that's when I realized maybe, maybe I do need to put some money aside. And so now saving is actually one of my biggest things. If like, if I can't put money on the side at the end of the month, I'm pissed.

In your defense, when we say that, that's when you were making relatively little amount.

Well, yeah, but still, it doesn't matter. You should always put part of your paycheck.

You should. But then, but, uh, you know, it— we're kind of painting the picture of you as being kind of this hoity-toity person, but when I met you, you were in a little— not shitty apartment, but it was shitty. It was a little nothing apartment with a mattress on the floor.

It made my mom cry when she visited.

Really?

Yes. She was like, I can't believe you're 32 and have to live like that.

So yeah, but I look at that like, here's a pragmatic gal that's like, I work a lot of hours, why the hell do I need a fancy place? And I'm— this is just for training.

I slept on that IKEA couch and that was it.

This isn't my final, you know, place to live for the rest of my life. It's just a step. And so I, I, uh—

no, that's true. I'm not that hoity-toity. But that's the thing, I worked— and I've said this like 4 times in the podcast— I worked really hard to get where I am. I made a lot of sacrifices. I wasted my freaking my youth. I mean, when other people were partying in Mallorca, I was spending night and day in the lab trying to create some mRNA for some dumb gene chip. So, I think I'm just trying to now live it up because I realize, oof, I'm over 40 now and I just had a baby and there's not much life left.

You are 40.

I'm 41 in a month. So, time is flying away. And so, this brings me back to, I think, we have figured out a way how to navigate our personalities on the financial level is where, like, when this cruise came up, for example, I said, hey, there's a Thanksgiving deal on this cruise, we need to do it. And you're like, uh, that's a lot of money. We should be really saving given that you have two nannies and we just had a baby. I mean, we had a 3-month-old at the time. And I said, yeah, but I really want to do it. And our oldest is moving out in the summer. And I said, this is our last time as a family, and it's baby's first birthday, we should do something special. And this dumb pandemic is finally easing up. And I just felt like this is the time to do it. And I said, I don't care if you don't want to do it, I'm just going to pay for it. And there's two components to it that I like about that. I know that you're still going to pay for it at the end of the day because you will want to contribute your part. But I can say that. I can say here, this is what I want to do and I can afford it if I want it. I don't want to put the pressure on you to have to say, Yes, I'm going to pay for it because, girl, you wanted this and I'm your husband and I'm going to provide for you and I'm going to buy this for you because you asked for it. No, I like it. I want it. It's my decision. I pay for it upfront, knowing very well that at the end of the day, we're going to still both be paying for it. But at least I don't pressure you into it. I don't make you feel obligated. I know you have 3 kids to take care of. I'm not really taking care of your kids financially. I buy them stuff here and there, but I'm not making a major contribution. And so I understand that your income has to provide for way more people than my income does. And so there'll always be a little bit of an imbalance there. And if I want to live the life that I want to live with you— and man, we missed so much because we didn't meet in the 20s. We met in our late 30s. There's so much we still want to see. And who knows how long we're going to be healthy? So that's where I'm going. I'm pushing on the accelerator saying we need to see a few things.

I just want to point out you were in your early 30s when when we met.

Yes, I was delicious.

Sweet little second thing. I was in my mid-30s.

I was so skinny. I loved it.

Still looking pretty good.

No, but I think we do a good job with that. And then at the same time, there's never a discussion of who pays the check tonight for dinner. Either you grab it or I grab it. It's just never a fight about it. I don't think we've ever had a fight about money.

No.

And I think that's because we stay independent. We each take care of our own business. And like the other day where I said, you know, this cruise is actually adding up to be really expensive and I'm going to be running up some credit card debt. Can we— can you help me with that? And you'd be like, yeah, no problem. So I think we know when to say, hey, this isn't fair, or—

and you need to help with that debt thing. This is a, um— I think that's the crux of a lot of people's worries when it comes to money is— and you alluded to it with your mom's husband the stepfather, was, um, your partner could do things that could really harm you. I could make some big bet on something, some investment, or you bet a wager if I was a gambler, and all of a sudden I lost all my money.

Yeah, same here.

And you could be— and I could come to you and go, I just lost all my money, I'm dead broke, and you have no legal obligation to dig me out of that hole, so to speak.

I don't, but of course I would because I love you.

Well, but you could say like, that was really stupid, dude. You're gonna put a plan to get it into place? Because guess what, dude? I could leave you tomorrow and you're on your own. You ain't gonna get half my shit, okay? So there's no safety net there. That's huge. Because I think if we were to take this idea and say, let's say you became president of the United States and you decided prenups for all. You'd have a huge contingent of people, mostly— let's be honest, mostly women— saying, uh, hold on a second, sister, let's talk about this first because I want to stay home with my children and I'm not about to let this asshole make some dumb mistake like screwing around with his secretary at work or making some huge gamble or some huge investment that costs us everything and I'm up my butt and I have no safety net. I need some kind of safety net here to take care of a kid and default.

That's part of a prenup too. You can put that in your prenup.

You could, but what, you know, the prenup from the man's perspective is, um, the law is going to screw me over because I'm a man and I have a penis, so I need to help mitigate some of that and hedge my bets. And let's put some language in there that protects me from some of that. No, like, um, I spoke to a gentleman the other day who, uh, very well-to-do, uh, business-wise, and he split from his first marriage and the And the— they had a prenup, and the prenup was— when you looked at it, I'm like, well, she came out like a bandit. She did all right because it was, you're going to get a nice fat check, here you go, go away. She still fought for— she still took him to court. But after all those, all those tens of thousands of dollars, it still was, no, the prenup says this, this is what you get, done. You know, be thankful you got that much. You didn't have to get— so it ended up being all right. But, um, So I don't know where I'm going with that is I don't know if it's realistic to say everyone should have. No, there are a lot of little scenarios.

It doesn't work for everybody.

But from our perspective, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. I don't know, you have to do a lot of convincing to tell me otherwise. Convincing that goes beyond, it's just not right. It's just anti-romantic. It's against the word of God. I don't know if you want to I don't mean to be insulting when I say that, but there are some people I'm sure that say that that goes against the tenets of their faith, that that introduces business and money when it should be about the relationship with God.

But a prenup—

each other.

But I think a prenup makes it about love, because if you are—

yeah, I would agree too.

Yeah, because if you say let's, let's put all the finances aside, let's just set that straight, that, that we don't ever have to worry about that money part because we love each other, and you are also you understand that you're always going to be together, so the prenup doesn't really matter. So I think, I think it takes a lot of the stress away from you so that you know, oh, this woman isn't marrying me for my money because she knows there's nothing.

See, that's the way I've always kind of looked at it too. Um, that's why I always say to men, maybe I'm being naive in this, but the fact that you were— well, when we met, you weren't necessarily gainfully employed, but you were one step away from being. It was just understood unless you were word, somehow incapacitated. Yeah, you were going to be making some pretty good bucks here coming up. That, that meant— maybe I'm being naive in thinking this— that, well, that means her attraction and her devotion to me is more real than if she was some cashier at Walmart who looked at me and said, oh, this guy's got to go.

All those ladies that were looking for sugar daddy on Tinder.

Yeah, he could— this guy could take care of me and my kid from my first marriage. And yeah, look 'Look at this guy.' Well, you were just like, 'No, I'm gonna be making pretty big bucks, and because of that, hey, sign here, dude. I don't want you taking all my money.' I'm like, 'Sounds good to me. You don't have to say— you don't have to ask me twice.' Um, yeah, I, you know, I think we're both in agreement. I don't see the big deal. And well, then, okay, so now people are going to be asking questions. All right, it's cool, I get it. So how do you guys handle the finance?

We still have separate accounts.

We have— I have my own bank accounts, you have yours. But we do have a joint one. We do, which we throw money into for our mortgage to cover that kind of stuff.

Yeah, and we share a house. Um, technically we don't share the second house, but you're still on the co-signer of the loan, so we kind of do. Yeah, so this is— and this is where you see, oh, okay, it's not clear-cut. We still have crossover of the financials, but we have a pretty clear, um, division of whatever we brought into the marriage we're taking out but the stuff that we're acquiring during the marriage, that's kind of more of a 50/50 thing, which I think is just fair because we're building it together, we're buying it together. And, um, you could argue, well, one person pays more into this mortgage, but then the other person paid more into vacations or whatever. So I think if you really want to be, you know, split hairs and get to that level of pettiness, and I think you're definitely not talking about a marriage based on love, then you're really talking about a marriage with people.

Well, there you go. There's some people going, no, that's exactly what I would do. I would get out a spreadsheet and say, sweetheart, you spent $50 on this last month. I spent $75. A little bit of discrepancy.

And maybe you're like that. Maybe you're, you're that type of person that, that wants to have that clarity, and that might work for you. But I think for us, so far I haven't felt resentful towards anything that I've spent, and I hope you could say the same. Um, and I would hope that we have the comfort level with each other to bring it up when one of of us feels like they're paying too much for something.

This is really kind of a good barometer for the health of your relationship. If you can't talk about dollars, ones and zeros, math, numbers, the most pragmatic and non-emotional stuff— well, in my mind, money, money always has emotion tied to it, but in terms of, you know, it's math. How much you bring, how much I bring, who gets what, when, and how. If you can't handle that, you're not gonna be able to handle a lot of the big stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, if you want to go to the detail, we, I remember for my green card, we had to provide proof that our marriage is not fake. And one of the documents that they listed as an example to prove that our marriage is legit was to provide a joint bank account. And I was like, what the hell? Is this not 1950? We don't have to have a joint bank account to prove that we're legally married or like legitimately married.

So, but I see their point.

Yeah, I see their point, but it just shows how common it is. And we really, we use that only to pay some, some like utility bills and some repairs on the house. But I have my own savings. I have my own retirement plan. I do have life insurance that names you.

Same here. So if you're wondering, yeah, if something happens to me, she gets money that will take care of the houses and everything else and vice versa.

So, but, but for example, your kids, I'm not paying for Lucy's college. I mean, I hope you didn't expect me to talk about that. And but then you're not paying for my nannies, and I think that's just fine because I chose my job. I, you know, I lived there in Texas and I could have moved here and said, hey, I'm going to stay here for the next 5 years.

But that right there, I think a lot of men would hear that and go, uh, this dude lucked out. Because there is— we talked about this in that previous podcast, the entitlement thing. There's a lot of women listening to that saying he doesn't pay for 'For what, sweetheart? He should pay for everything.' And you'd be like, 'Why?' 'Because he's the man, damn it.' And I'm like, 'Oh, here we go.' But you know, you make—

yeah, but okay, so, so let's say I don't want to pay for the nannies because it's a stupid amount of money. What, what would happen then? I would draw away from your money that you have available to your kids. But you have 3 of them. I have 1. I can afford a little, a little bit of nanny business for a few years. I just don't think it's— I don't know if fair is the right word, but I really wanted this kid more than I think you did. And I said, I am going to make this kid work because I know for you this is a big step back because your kids are grown and you're finally financially happy and you're in a great place. And but this is my wish. I want this baby. And I decided I'm going to work as hard as I can to provide for this baby so you don't feel like this baby is just another burden onto your life, but it's actually an enjoyable experience for you. And I think that's how it is. But there will be days where I'll say, can you pay for dinner? Can you? You know, and I know that we talked about, I think, the mortgage payment for the second house. I reduced that. So I think we're, we're finding a way without having to really openly talk about it where we, we find a balance and we find some fairness and we help each other out, always understanding that you, you can't always say, oh, this isn't fair, because nothing in life is fair. And it's always a, we work together to make each other happy in whatever it makes me happy to operate and work in my job. And as hard as it may be for you to understand that I really want to work full-time, you help me out with that by not nagging, but not, you know, making me feel bad about leaving my kid with strangers. Um, and you, and you just let me do my thing. And it's the same thing with you. I, I know that your business is maybe risky and it could tank, or it could not, or it could explode and, you know, become a billionaire in a few years. And I support you with whatever you do as much as I can financially and with time and with, with love. But that's just what you do as a couple. And there's no fairness here. There's no, well, I gave you 5 minutes of my time but you gave me $10 of your bill. It's just, that's just not how you work in a marriage.

That's, that's where it can go in a hurry when you got somebody. It can't and everything else built up.

So yeah, but I think that's when you have a big framework. The big framework is clarified by having a prenup because that already sets the mood of, hey, this is where we're gonna be in our marriage. We're gonna be separate. We're gonna be each independently responsible for our stuff. Then the tone is just set for the rest of the marriage of, hey, you help yourself. If you need my help, I'm your partner. I'm there. I love you. I'm always going to be there for you. I will help you out. But it's not an understood thing. That's the part I like about having a financial setup before you get married.

So what do you guys think? Is this unusual? Is that— I have a feeling based upon what I'm hearing from guys, especially the divorced guys listening to when I describe some of this stuff, like in previous meetings and podcasts and stuff, they say, yes, yes, that's what I want. That's what I want. I want a woman who does that. To To which I say, okay, then, then do that.

I don't—

like, well, yeah, but good luck trying to find a woman who wants to do that. Um, so there's that fight between I really want a woman and I really want a partnership, and I really want this very pragmatic look at the financial side of it. But that's so rare that it's either-or. Either I take a woman or we do the financial thing because I can't have both. And I'm just like, maybe I lucked out. Maybe I lucked out with a woman who's really rational when it comes to this kind of stuff. But frankly, from where I sit, hey, take it or leave it, sweetheart. This is how it is. And I think if she was smart, she'd think the same way. But I'm a little prejudiced in this, and that's my perspective. I could be wrong. We could be wrong.

That's true.

But what do you guys think? So let me know. Let's talk about this in the DSO fraternity groups. For those that don't know what the hell I'm talking about when I say DSO fraternity, do me a favor if you would and go to dadstartingover.com/join, J-O-I-N, dadstartingover.com/join, and check out the members-only group that we have. We got some big things happening there. We just revamped our website, and coming very soon is an app, a mobile app that our members will will be able to use. So no longer do they need to jump from Facebook for private conversation groups to the website for signing up for meetings to— no, they just do everything right in one app. Very cool, very excited about that. That's a new thing that's coming soon. And we revamped the website, our members are seeing that now and slowly but surely coming over and leaving Facebook for their discussions. We have right now, we have 3 different private Facebook groups we use for our member forum. In addition to that, we have live member meetings. We have hundreds of member meetings that have been recorded, each of them an hour or more. Some of them here lately have been like 2 hours long. So we have hundreds of hours of meetings that you can listen to. We have a private member-only podcast where I and some of the coaches get on there and babble about all kinds of stuff. We have my, my books in audiobook format as well as PDF that you can download and read. I mentioned the discussion forums, and we also have in-person meetups called BroFests where we get together. We're having one coming up here soon in April— in August, or excuse me, in April in Austin, Texas. Excuse me, really looking forward to that. Um, BroFest Austin is going to be pretty huge. We have Dr. Robert Glover is going to show up, so you can hang out with him, have dinner, listen to him give a presentation, as well as G.S. Youngblood from Masculine Relationship. You may know the book, as well as Suzanne Venker and, uh, Christy Vaccaro, a fitness instructor from Las Vegas. So we have a really cool group on tap to learn from. It's an entire weekend. Get to hang out with guys in the group, hang out with these awesome personalities that are pretty big in their field, and we're very excited about it. So check it out, the DSO Fraternity, dadstartingover.com/join. And Mrs. DSO, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

And, uh, guys, we will see you on the next one. Have a good one.