12. "My husband won't talk about money with me"

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I think what you.

Said first, that's the problem. It'll be fine. We don't, we don't want our lives to be just fine though, right? We'd want it to be better than fine. We want it to be great.

Okay.

What if you wanted to live a rich life? What if you wanted your life to be better than fine? But when you tried to convince your partner to dream just a little bigger, his response was, well, it depends.

Well, no, we would, we would want it to be better than fine.

Yeah, but like, I mean, I guess it depends, right? Like what your priorities are. Well, I just don't have a lot of trust in certain things, like for a lot of reasons.

Right when I pulled and pulled. Try to understand what their rich life is, specifically what his rich life is. I just got a lot of resistance.

We can go tomorrow, like if we wanted to. Right. But I don't know, do we need to go like one of those things, like, I don't know, like, just go, Greg.

You don't need to do anything. You could sit at home and drink out of a straw for the rest of your life.

I've just kind of been like an old fashioned guy who just puts money in the bank.

Hi, I'm Ramit Sethi, and welcome to the I will teach you to be rich podcast. Today's couple, Laura and Greg, are from Canada, and between the two of them, they make about $150,000 per year. Laura contacted me for advice because she wants to be able to spend some of their money on renovations that she believes their house desperately needs. Now, Greg doesn't want to spend any money on their house because they plan to move somewhere else in a few years. What do you do when one partner sees money completely differently than the other? And not just sees it differently, but one partner wants to engage on money and the other doesn't even want to talk about it at all? That's what we're going to find out today.

Oh, and by the way, she only.

Told Greg that she applied to be on the show right before we got on the call together. That's a little clue that's going to be important as you listen to today's episode.

I think we should spend some money on our home, and Greg thinks that we should save every dollar we have.

I didn't think that we'd be here forever, so I don't see the point in putting a whole bunch of money into it if we're not going to be here.

My thought is, like, we're living in this home for likely the next, like, three to five years. It shouldn't just be like, we're squatting here. Like, we should be making it our home. We should be adding to the value of the home. So when it is time for us to sell and buy our forever home, you know, we've, we've lived in this house. We've not just waited here. We know we have the money. I think Greg's just a little bit more weary about spending anything where I'm like, we're fine. It's safe. We can do this.

Already you can hear lots of layers here. Greg and Laura have totally different views on saving and spending money. And there's also some financial literacy issues, like the idea that renovating your house adds to the value.

I just want to go on a.

Quick side note here because lots of people mistakenly believe that if they renovate their house for $10,000, then they can automatically sell their house for $10,000 more. This is wrong. Most renovations don't make you money, they just cost you money. Now, there are a few renovations that tend to be more profitable, like kitchens and baths, but again, Most of them are simply costs. So if you spend 10,000 bucks, you might get a nicer stove or a wall or an archway, but you're not going to get that money back. This is one of the many lies that we tell ourselves about money. We take the things we want and we disguise them as investments. Part of your rich life is getting educated about the basics. Okay? That's what we're here to do. And you can learn about that in my book, I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. Another part of your rich life is being honest with yourself. If you want to renovate something, learn if it will pay you back, and then acknowledge the real reasons. Are you doing it because it's an investment or are you doing it because you just plain want it? Either one is fine, but you gotta be honest. Okay? That was Ramit's real estate rant of the week. Let's listen in for even more layers between Laura and Greg.

Greg bought the house on his own before, like, a week before we met. And it is very much a bachelor pad type house. Like, it's very small. I don't find it to be very functional for me personally. But I know that currently we do need to stay in this house. We can't afford a larger house at this moment, and it wouldn't. Like, it just doesn't make sense for us to move. But I think for me, if we could improve upon things, it would feel more comfortable for me and it would just make both of our lives easier. So for me, it doesn't look good and it doesn't feel good. You want to be able to. I'm in my home. I feel comfortable. I want to go into the bath and take a bath. But our bath is disgusting. It was that way when Greg moved in.

I understand what she's coming from. I mean, I've always just had the opinion that, like, a lot of this stuff can be expensive and the price can run up. Right. And why do you want to spend so much money when you're just going to leave? Right.

Greg has a point. If you're going to leave in a couple of years, certain renovations might not make financial sense. Now, one thing I notice is that his money lens, the way that he views the world, is financial, while Laura's money lens seems to be comfort.

Right?

She wants to be comfortable in the place that she lives. She wants to make it feel like it's theirs, not just his. When you are working on money with your partner, it's very important to be transparent about what your money lenses are for certain things. My money lens is comfort or security for another part of my life. It's speed or results, sometimes security, and sometimes it's cost. You can Google Ramit Sethi Money Lenses to find out some of the other ways that you might think about money.

What do you think the real problem is here, both of you?

We have differences on what we each need to feel comfortable in the home. I obviously want things to be a little bit nicer. Greg would probably be happy, like, with a tent in the backyard.

Yeah. Like, I never really needed much. Right. Like, I don't know, like, I didn't really have much, even furniture before she moved in. So. And I was good then. Like, I didn't need anything extra. Right. Like, obviously it's nice. I love having her here. I love her. I don't know. I didn't really put much thought into it. Right.

Well, so we started, like, really talking about the bathroom. Probably like December, January. And the thing is, my dad is able to help us do the work, so we're not paying for somebody's labor, which makes it a little bit more reasonable. Anyways, Greg was not on board with doing anything. So we started, like, making a budget. Like, okay, I think this is how much we spend in a month. And then in March, we actually tracked. This is actually how much money we spent. So we could say, okay, we have this much money extra and we can put this much money into our savings and we can put this much money towards home improvement every month. Right. So at the end of a year, we should be able to do X, Y and Z, depending on what the costs are. So I think that slightly helped to get Greg on board with just doing the downstairs bathroom. And my dad was able to price it out for us. And it is, like, fairly cheap. It's a small space. It's just a toilet, a vanity, and flooring. That's not a lot.

Why? Buy versus rent.

Oh, so you have some. You can build equity and such. Right. Like, I've rented before in university. And like, you know, to me it was just like, okay, well, I lived in this place and I was paying somebody else's kind of mortgage. Right. With regards to my rent. Right. So I decided to buy because it made more sense to me at the time to kind of get some. Get some assets and build equity. Right. For when you do want to move. You know what I mean? So.

Okay. When I'm on these calls, my job isn't to correct people for any mistaken beliefs they might have. My job is to help them solve their money issues. But for you listening right now, I just have to give you a list of common misconceptions that Greg just said. First, he said build equity. Yes, maybe true, but you don't build equity if you move out after two to three years. A good rule of thumb is to live in the same house for at least 10 years. Next, I don't want to pay someone else's mortgage. You know, it's funny when people use that phrase as if they absolutely hate someone else making money off of them, but it's funny. We don't say, I went out to eat at an Italian restaurant, but I just hated paying that restaurateur's mortgage. We only say that for real estate. Isn't that funny? That's the power of propaganda. When you are paying rent, you're not simply paying someone else's mortgage. You are paying for value and you're getting it. And finally, Greg said to get some assets. Okay, assets are important, but compared to what? A house is an asset, but it also has huge phantom costs. In many ways, Greg is pretty knowledgeable. He understands that renovating the house might not be profitable, especially if they're going to move soon. But in other ways, the very decision to buy a house wasn't fully thought through. And I'm not sharing these points to disparage Greg. I'm sharing them because Greg's money lens, that way that he views the world, seems to be profit and roi. But he hasn't even done the basic fundamentals of understanding why he bought a house. And that's the biggest purchase of his life. You can imagine that if he continues down this path, all the financial mistakes that he will make over the course of his life and their lives together. So when Greg continues carrying on about profit and why should we spend money here when we're going to move soon, I see lots of red flags.

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If she comes to me with an idea and says hey, I want to do this, this or this and we say okay, like I'm open minded, I'll listen. But when it's the end of the day, it turns out it's going to cost us a boatload of money, right? I guess the way I see it is there's no guarantees that like you know, when you resell this place that you're going to get that kind of back. I just assume that it would cost quite a bit of money, right?

Oh.

Oh wow.

Okay. You assume that it would cost a lot.

Yeah.

Laura, do you assume it will cost.

What I Don't think it'll. Okay. I mean I personally don't think it'll cost a lot. But my version, my thoughts on what a lot of money is I think is different from what Greg's thoughts are on a lot of money when it comes to spending on the house.

Why is that?

I think because I can maybe be a little bit more realistic about like, you know, what things actually cost. Like, you know, I've looked into how much, I mean we, okay, we've already bought flooring, but we looked into how much will flooring cost, how much would a new tub cost, how much would tiling cost, how much would a new toilet? You know, so then I can kind of get like a slight perspective on things. And, and also both of our parents have recently redone their bathrooms to a much nicer degree than what we would do ever here. And I know it's not going to cost as much as their bathrooms cost. So to me I'm like, well, ours is going to be not too expensive. But Greg I think disagrees with what, what is expensive or inexpensive. But we have the money. The thing is we currently have the money and it's not like we're trying to do it like everything at once. We would do one room, okay, we did it. We're still good, we're still saving every month and then move on to the next one and oh, okay, there was all these unexpected costs. Then we're going to halt it for a bit, we're going to save some more. But we currently have the money and it's just sitting in the bank doing nothing, waiting for us to spend it to make our house nicer.

If Greg doesn't want to spend money on his house, where does he want to spend it?

Greg, what do you want to do with your money?

I don't know, save it and then, well, I don't know. I've never been much of a traveler or anything so like, I don't know, I've always just got a paycheck, put in the bank, bought groceries, gas, et cetera and that's it, right? I don't have any long term plans.

Or anything but dream with me for a minute, you're going to have a lot of money. You guys make a very good income together. What are you going to do with this money saving? It's accumulating. What are you going to do with it?

I don't know.

What do you spend money on that makes you happy?

I don't know, like not, I don't know really like I spend a lot of time at work. Like, I play golf sometimes I just set up a home gym in the basement that costs a little bit of money. But again, right now there's no gyms open. So I bought myself a new truck last year. Yeah, that's pretty much it right now.

Okay, that's cool. So golf, home gym. Sounds awesome. And a truck. Okay, that's good. I didn't know that. So that's fantastic. So let's assume you keep your savings rate up. Let's assume you get a couple more raises over time. You're going to get the house, you'll have a down payment. Let's assume that that works out over time. Then you skipped right to your kids going to college, which is like 20 years away. It seems like that's a big hole.

For all this work. You're going to work every day.

Like, what's the point of it all?

Well, like, that's a great question. I don't know. Right.

Like, well, that's why I'm here.

I never really thought about that, to be honest with you. Right. Because again, like, I didn't do a lot of trips or anything. Like, I know some people who work, went to Europe or whatever. It cost him a fortune. And like, I just never did that. Right. So.

And I just, I don't like that kind of life where we're just living for one day in the future. Don't worry, Greg. I'm not saying go out and renovate the whole house and spend all your money. Not saying that at all. Okay. What I am saying is we probably all know somebody who saves and saves and there's just no point at the end. They die at 64 or they literally don't know how to spend money.

I think I know a lot of people like that.

Pretend you're not Greg. You're somebody else. You got the amount of money you've got in the bank. You're earning more, you're saving, you're investing. You can get your house, keep the truck. Great. What does this person, we'll call them Gregory. What does this person do with their money from now until Gregory retires? Paint a picture for me.

For who? For me or for somebody, like, hypothetical person, Hypothetical Gregory. I don't know what they do, to be honest, because I'm trying to think about, from my, like, I guess, like, you know, you think about it like every. The value of a dollar, right? And you know, you get hear that all the time and all the time. And I don't know what people Would do. Right. Like, to be honest, because I never did it myself, so I have a hard time picturing it.

Is this not fascinating?

Even in a hypothetical, Greg struggles to imagine what someone would spend money on. He just cannot put himself in someone else's shoes. He can't dream.

Is it possible that Greg of tomorrow could find a way to spend his money that gives him joy?

Yeah, possibly. I mean, I think it just. It's got to be within reason and not reckless. Right. Like, to me, it has to kind of make sense. Right.

Well, you're going to stop before it's reckless. I have no doubt about that.

Yeah.

So let's take that off.

Well, we got to start before.

Yeah, yeah, but notice what you just did. You went from zero to maybe we're going to go 150 miles an hour.

But right now you're going zero.

So why worry about the reckless part? You're not even in first year.

Yeah, fair.

Something to think about. Cause otherwise, the alternative is you save fairly well. You're diligent. Sounds like you have a budget.

We'll talk about the numbers in a minute.

But you end up at the end of your life with a house and a couple million bucks. And what else?

I don't know.

Yeah, I think we're doing okay, considering we don't really have much debt. Like, it's not like we're still paying off school loans, obviously. We have the mortgage and we have car payments, but it's not like we have credit card debt and stuff. I think we've been okay in saving. I just started putting money into RRSPs a couple of years ago, and we do both have very good pension plans through work. So everything we put away. Well, everything that I'm putting into, like an RSP is additional to what is already being taken off our paychecks.

How much do you save every year? Save and invest.

Invest. I have, like. Well, it's into, like, a mutual fund. Rrsp I have. And it's not a lot, but when I started it, to be fair, we were planning our wedding. $50 every other week that goes. Which is not a lot. I know that.

And then, Greg, what about you? How much do you save and invest per year?

I would say probably 3 to 400amonth.

Just savings?

Yeah.

Okay.

And then I also contribute, like, into our joint savings account.

How much is that per year?

I don't know. It kind of depends what we've got going on. Like, if we're buying something, like we bought flooring for our downstairs bathroom. I didn't put money into the joint savings account that month because we paid for that.

Greg, how come your money is sitting in savings and it's not being invested? I'm curious.

I don't really know much about it, to be honest. Investing, I never really researched it or looked into it.

It's curious because you have a decent amount in there. But you talked a lot to me about, you know, not wanting to be reckless and wanting to make sure you have enough and things like that, but you're actually losing money every day. You're not investing a lot of money. So what do you think's behind that?

I don't know. I just don't. I. I guess my lack of. Kind of understanding or knowledge about the subject just kind of. I don't really want to be involved in it because I don't have a lot of trust in it. There's been a lot of, like, you know, like, I've always looked. If you're talking, like, are you talking about, like, stocks and stuff or. Yeah, like, to me, like, I look at it and, like, I just never really had a lot of trust in it. Right. Like, partially, probably because I don't know. Right. And I never really looked into it. Right.

But look, I'm not here to change your mind. I'm just here to understand and suggest a couple things. I will tell you that you go to work every day, you work hard, you make a lot of money. You will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime, probably over a million dollars by not spending a weekend learning how to invest. So all the time you go to work, all the hours you grind, and make all this money, it's just sitting there. You will lose over a million dollars in your lifetime by not learning how to invest. There's no vision of what do you want to do with your money. It's just, you know, I don't care, Greg, that's what you're saying. Whatever. Put it over here. And Laura, you're saying, let's spend it on a mirror and a floor and this and that. And Greg's like, what? Why are we going to do that? We're moving out of here in three, five, seven years anyway. So you guys are down here, you're in, like, a ground war. You're in the weeds, but nobody has ever stepped up and said, what are we doing all this work for making 150 grand a year?

The hell.

What are we doing with all this money? And then you spend the next 30 years fighting over tile?

I don't.

It doesn't sound inspiring to me.

Feeling comfortable?

Always.

I really like going, like, out for a really nice dinner or something. Nice to be able to just do that without thinking like, okay, this is our one time every three months or whatever it is, you know, if we wanted to travel, like, not being like, okay, let's. Let's plan a trip for two years from now, you know, being like, okay, you know what? We have the funds, we have the time. Let's go next week, get more specific. I want to be able to get our bigger house or do the renovation on this house. I want to be able to. I mean, someday. No time soon, obviously, but travel. Go on a couple vacations somewhere.

Okay, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Let's get specific.

Because you're.

You're in the clouds. You can't start using your money for a rich life if you can't get specific about it. When I started off, when I was younger, in my 20s, I'll tell you how small my rich life was, I wanted to be able to go to a restaurant and order appetizers. Because when I was a kid, we never ate out. We ate out once every six weeks or so. We had a coupon to go to a pizza place, and we would never, ever order appetizers. So now to be able to go to a restaurant, and if I see two appetizers, I go, yeah, I'll take them both. What is it, 15 bucks? But it feels unbelievable just to know I can do it. And then, you know, my dreams got bigger. Oh, I want to be able to get in a taxi instead of the subway. Or I want to sort my airfare by direct flight only. Right now I'm like, oh, this feels good.

Be able to work out with a.

Trainer or whatever it may be.

Felt good.

So you're saying you want to travel?

Yeah, I'd like to see more of Canada. I'd like to go to the west coast, like to B.C. i'd like to go to Calgary, maybe up farther north in Ontario.

I don't.

I guess visit every province at some point would be nice.

Love it. And is that expensive or inexpensive? What does that look like to you?

I'd say fairly expensive, like traveling. I'd say trips I've taken in Canada are more expensive than trips I've taken in the U.S. okay.

Are you driving? You flying?

I fly.

Well, driving out there take about four days.

Yeah. Fly like. I mean, in Ontario could drive, you could do it. But anywhere else, like, you have to fly, like, yeah, it's, you know, that.

People from the United States are horrible.

With geography, so we don't know where any.

Yeah.

So I'll take your word for it. I need to talk about geography with.

Everybody for a second because I suck at it. Couple of examples of why. Number one, I want to go back to seventh grade, where my arch rival. Albert. Albert C. If you're listening to this, you know what I'm about to say. Albert and I competed with each other in the spelling bee and geography bee. Now, Albert was very smart and crushed me in geography, but it's very important for me to make sure everybody knows that I absolutely dominated in the spelling bee.

Albert.

Don't ever forget that. So fast forward, oh, about 20 years, and my wife and I were planning our honeymoon around the world, and we were like, where should we go? Let's go on a long trip. And we started writing down all these different countries. And then I found a site where you can just plop all the countries, and it shows you what the flight paths would be from one to the other. It was literally the most inefficient travel that I could have possibly plotted.

I showed it to a couple of.

My travel friends, and they're like, are you stupid? You want to fly from there to there? And I just flash back to seventh grade. Albert. Albert would have known better. All right, back to the conversation.

Okay. You're flying around.

Great.

And what seat are you flying in, by the way?

I just. I'm happy with the regular seat, honestly. Like, it's never crossed my mind to, you know, be in whatever business class or first class. Like, that's not crossed my mind ever. I'm happy to honestly just get on a plane and go, okay, great.

By the way, I'm glad it crossed your mind today. That's what I want the two of you to do. I want the two of you to start thinking about, what do we want to do with our money. It doesn't mean you have to sit in business class or first class. It seems like you don't care about that. Fine. I totally respect that. I have a car that's 15 years old, more than 16 years old. I really don't care.

Okay.

But at least I've thought about, do.

I want to get a Tesla?

And I decide, no, it's not that important to me. So I love hearing you say, hmm, never crossed my mind.

Let me think.

Is that important to me? No. I've decided it's not. Happy with economy.

Great.

But I do want to get on a plane and go to this part of Canada.

Okay.

Love it. So now we've got. You want to travel to Canada? What do you say, Greg? You want to go on that trip?

Sure.

Great answer. Love it. Okay, now we have a vision.

Just to be on that note. Like, it's like, do we, do we need to go? Like one of those things? Like, I don't know, Greg, you don't.

Need to do anything. You could sit at home and drink out of a straw for the rest of your life.

You know, I made a mistake here, and I really wish that I had taken a different approach with Greg. For the entire episode, I have been chasing Greg. Feels like I've been pulling teeth. Have you noticed that every question I ask, I'm getting back a one word answer or just stonewalled? I'm not getting engagement from him in my life. I've found that if you are inside a dynamic you don't like, our tendency is to just try harder, to chase more. And that's what I did on this podcast. And as you can tell, it's not working. But a better approach is to step back and try to change the dynamic. One thing I could have done here would be to call out the elephant in the room. You know, hey, Greg, I'm really enjoying chatting with you and I've enjoyed hearing how you bought your house so early in life, but it also feels like I'm chasing you, like I'm pulling teeth and I'm just not sure if I'm feeling. You want to have this conversation with me today. Am I reading that right? That's how you call out the elephant in the room and maybe possibly change the dynamic. I wish that I had stopped chasing Greg and instead made him put some skin in the game. Hey, Greg, what do you want to have happen here today? Do you want to change anything? That's okay if you don't. It's your life, not mine. If you want help, I'm here. But what would you like help with? If I had done that, and also if Laura had told him earlier than right before the call what they were going to be doing, I think we would have had a better chance of success.

There's this myth that if you rent, it means you haven't made it. I don't really believe that I rent. And I want you to know that you are not a failure if you choose to rent. In fact, I want more freedom right now than buying a 30 year mortgage. But if I'm spending thousands of dollars a month, I want to get some of the perks that homeowners get. And that is where BILT comes in. BILT is a loyalty program for renters. You pay your rent through Bilt and you can earn points for it. Think about it. You're earning points for your biggest expense every single month. And you can redeem those built points towards flights, hotels, Lyft rides, or even future rent payments. BILT has evolved into a complete rewards ecosystem where you get rewarded for the first time as a renter. And it's easy. Almost any payment method is compatible, so you can start earning right now. I wish I had had this when I first started living in New York. Plus, BILT recently announced that homeowners will be able to get rewarded the same way on their mortgage in 2026. So stay tuned. Join the loyalty program for renters and@join built.com ramit that's J O I N B I L T.com ramit and make sure you use our URL so they know that we sent you. When I talk to new business owners, I hear a lot of the same motivations. I want to make extra money. I want more freedom. I want flexibility. But I will tell you something that I've never heard. I want to start a business so I can fill out a bunch of tax forms. That sounds like my hell. The good news is you don't need to be a tax expert to start your own business. Instead, you can use Gusto, this episode's sponsor. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one. It's remote, friendly, and it's incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. They offer automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, workers comp 401k matches, you name it, they can help. Plus, it's quick and easy to switch to Gusto. Just transfer your existing data and get up and running fast with no hidden fees and no surprises. Try gusto today@gusto.com ramit and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll@gusto.com ramIt once more. Gusto.com ramit like, we can go tomorrow?

Like, if we wanted to, Right? But I don't know.

Keep going.

I want to hear the end of this.

That's it. If we wanted to go tomorrow, we can go. Like, we're not in a position where we can't go. I guess we just haven't. We haven't taken any steps to go. Is, I guess, the issue.

Yes. Do you see my point?

You guys are down here arguing about.

Tile, but the stuff that you actually.

Want to do, you've never even thought about it.

You never talked about it.

You make $150,000 a year, and you have no idea what you want to spend any of it on, except for what is literally in front of your eyes, which is this house that is not making one of you happy.

Yeah.

It'S not really a budget problem. It's Greg saying, we don't need to. Which is true. You don't need to do any of this. You don't even need to be on this call, but you're here. And then, Laura, it's you not acknowledging that you both have two totally different perspectives and actually saying, well, hey, let's start up here. Let's talk about what we want. And Greg, although I think you have a hard exterior, Greg, about, I don't know. I don't know what I want.

Laura, I think you could pull it out of him.

And honestly, how do you know what you want if you've never actually spent money and seen people who get joy out of it? Do we want to travel more or eat differently? If you had the ability to do it, would you?

Yeah, probably.

I think so. Like, if you're talking about, like, if money is no object, then yeah, of course. Right. Play it out.

What would you do?

What would you do if money were no object?

Well, there's lots of things that you would do, right? Like you'd go to the Super Bowl. Right. You'd do all kinds of stuff that you like. I guess you would.

I would not. But I love hearing that you would go to the super bowl if money were.

No, it's just one of those things that, like, if money were no object, then you could literally do whatever you want.

But I think you can do that.

Well, I don't know if I can afford that, but.

Okay, I can show you how to afford it easily. If you want to do it, you.

Could go, well, I don't know about that. I'm kind of skeptical about that. Right. Because, I mean, I don't know. But anyways, I'm just saying if money is no object, then, I mean, you could literally do anything you want. But I think in the real world, like, it actually is, and you have to live within a budget and means and prioritize what you're going to spend.

On this super bowl thing is really fascinating to me. It is really, really fascinating. And Greg, I don't know if you know how interesting it really is that what you just Said, because first of all, I don't know the first thing about how much it costs to go to the super bowl, but let's dream big. 20 grand.

Yeah, I would say close to that.

Perfect.

End of the day. Yeah.

I love it when I talk about the kind of stuff you. You guys love. Like, I'm not just talking about eating at some restaurant. I asked another guy, what do you love? You know what he told me?

He goes, coffee.

I go, okay. I said, what do you spend your money? He goes, I love coffee beans, and I have a coffee machine. I go, okay. Anything else? No. I said, look, man, I like coffee too, but that's kind of boring. I'm talking about love, like, the rest of your life. You're 32. So when I hear you talk about something that's 25 grand, and it's like.

A life dream, man, I get excited.

Because, no, you might not be able to afford that today, but if that's something you want to achieve in your life, I can show you in five seconds how you can afford that. Okay. 25 grand is not that much for the amount of money you both make. You want to go there? We could put on a calendar and project when you would accomplish it. That gets me excited. $25,000 things, $30,000 things. And again, I'm not talking just the numbers. I'm talking about the scope, the scale. You want to go to Canada? Different parts. Love it. Now, I want to point something out to you. I looked at your numbers. If you were to conservatively invest 2,000 bucks a month. I'm being conservative because you actually have more money than that right now. You're just. It's like you have a pot with holes in it. Money is just leaking out because you're not. You don't have a plan. You don't have a vision. So money's just kind of coming out of it. But let's just say 2,000 bucks a month. You invest that plus the money, you've already got, 75 grand or so. I'm being conservative. By the time you retire, you have $953,000, okay? And that's just. That's, like, conservative. You could do more than 50% more. You could do double that.

It's millions of dollars. If you really wanted to.

We're talking, like, a lot of money. You're young, you have pensions, which most people in the US don't have, and you have money sitting around literally earning nothing. But if you don't, like, make a plan, make a vision, start investing. It properly, then there's no Super Bowl. There's no, you know, you Suddenly take like, five years to go travel somewhere on an airplane for 700 bucks. Guys, that's like, I feel like you could be thinking so much bigger.

I don't think that 1:50 in Canada and the US are the same. I think we're probably a lot lower. Like, you don't get as much for that here. Just like, with regards to how much you could actually realistically save. Like, I know it might sound like a lot if you live in a certain place, but up here it's like, it's not really. Not really much.

Not a lot.

Right.

So then isn't that more of a reason for you to invest your money and make it work for you?

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, of course. But at the end of the day, I think, like, when you're looking at it that, like, that way, like, it's not as much as you make it sound. Sound to be. Right.

I'm sure things are expensive up there. I believe you, but that's not really the point. Right. The point is you have $50,000 just sitting in cash, and each month you save approximately 4% of your income, which is, you know, it could be better. I understand there are certain expenses, but, like, if. If those are the numbers that we're talking about, then if you want the money to work for you, it won't happen by just saving it alone. Basically, you have opportunities to turn that money into a lot more, but it would require you to learn about investing and to start putting some of that money to work for you. Otherwise, it just sits there. So that's something I would suggest you can get educated. I totally understand if you're skeptical about investing, but I always ask people, what is the cost of your beliefs? If you believe that investing is super risky and scary, okay, fine. But I can calculate for you right now how much that will cost you. And it will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to just let the money sit there. So that would be my suggestion to you. You're losing money every day by not investing it. Greg, what do you think happens if you don't change anything going forward?

If we don't change anything? I don't know. I don't. Like, I think it'll be. It'll be fine. Like, I think we'll live comfortably, you know, I don't. That's basically how I was raised. Right? So. But that being said, like, I'm willing to kind of make some concessions or agreements on some things. Right. With regards to spending.

But, yeah, I think what you said.

First, that's the problem. It'll be fine.

We don't.

We don't want our lives to be just fine, though.

Right?

We'd want it to be better than fine. We'd want it to be great.

Mm.

Okay.

Talk to each other.

Well, no, we would. We would want it to be better than fine.

Yeah. But I guess it depends, right, what your priorities are, right?

If you want to be fine, it feels really comfortable because you know exactly what to do. Go to work, put money in the bank one day, get another house. Maybe we fight once in a while about this or that, but we're fine. Just like your families. But if we want more. Well, I don't even know what more is. How do I even decide what I want to do with my money? I never thought about that. It's uncomfortable and it's scary. And isn't the stock market like a scam and you're just going to lose all your money and forget it? Let's go back to what's comfortable. That's an option.

What do you think?

Why you're laughing, Laura?

It's funny because that would be like, Greg, he would say, like, it's a scam.

Well, I don't know. I just don't have a lot of trust in certain things. Like, for a lot of reasons. Right. That, you know, I think, like, I have friends and, you know, co workers that day trade and stuff. And, like, it seems to me like these guys have their head in the clouds and they're just, like, waiting for one day when they strike it rich and they can just leave.

Yeah.

And in my view, like, could that happen? Sure could. Right. But you could also, like, lose your shirt, too. Right.

So, great.

That's my whole thing about it. What's that?

You work out.

Yeah. All right.

What if I told you that I feel like working out is a scam because, like, I don't want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger? I go in there, I squat, suddenly I'm squatting three plates and I'm gonna look like Schwarzenegger in two weeks. Scam. What would you tell me?

I'd say you're probably wrong. I'd say you're wrong because it's, you know, a proven fact. Right. Like, you work out, you're gonna get bigger, you're gonna get stronger. Right.

But it's a scam because what if I look like Schwarzenegger?

Well, then don't do it. Don't work out.

Thank you. Now what if somebody came to me and said I don't want to invest because my co workers day trade. And that seems really stupid. What do you think I would say to that person?

You'd say that I'm kind of looking at the. Looking in the wrong place. Right. But my perception of this whole thing is like I listen to these guys talking like they're, they're going to be like the next guy that writes a book like you and like they're going to retire when in reality that I don't think that's going to happen. Right.

Your friends are never going to do that.

Exactly right.

Day trading is not investing. It's not investing.

Okay.

To me, more like gambling more than anything.

And I would never encourage you to do that. In fact, in chapter three and six and seven, you will see me take a huge shit on all these day traders and scammers. Okay, point blank, I name names.

That example kind of worked, but not as well as I had hoped. The reason that I used the workout example was I could see that Greg clearly worked out. Now he automatically got what I was saying about working out being a scam, which is of course ridiculous. But when I brought that example back to money, he couldn't make the connection. You see this skepticism in people a lot, especially people who haven't been exposed to different ways of thinking. They instinctively feel something is wrong and rather than get curious, they circle the wagons and they say that's not for people like us. Or even that's just a scam. Personally, this kind of thinking drives me crazy. There are so many small minded values like this that keep people in their same unhappy situation for generations. If one of them had the courage to say, hey, is that actually true? They could change the trajectory of their entire family for the rest of their lives. But it's often too hard. This simple black or white worldview is so compelling, it's often intoxicating and giving people a sense of control over a very uncontrollable world. Really, there's only so much that I can do if somebody does not want to participate with me. And that's why I think we're all feeling a little stuck right now.

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The next step here?

I think the next Step is to learn about investing so we can work on maybe investing some of our money, and then we don't have to have fights about, like, a $1,000 home renovation, because $1,000 is a lot for us anymore.

Close. Before you get to that. Because you know what? $1,000 is a lot if. If you don't know what it's supposed to look like. Right. I get it. Especially now. I get it. You know, it's hard to look forward when you're so deeply in the weeds. You need to kind of have some basic benchmarks. Then you can start to say, ooh, $1,000 is not that much, because we.

Already checked the boxes on all this other stuff.

And then suddenly, you're just not fighting about this stuff down here. You're actually talking about the big picture.

So surprising to think that, like, okay, that is something that maybe we could actually do. Well, not we. Greg could do it, but you could.

Both do it if you want to do it.

Well, I probably wouldn't even spend that kind of money on one thing. Right. But that was just an example.

All right, so pretty much none of.

The conversation I had here really produced any change whatsoever. And I am disappointed. I know that not every conversation can produce some life change, but every time I have a call, I want to help a couple take at least one step towards their rich life. As I reflect back on this conversation, the bathroom is just a symptom. This bathroom that they've both fixated on and argued over really has nothing to do with the problem whatsoever. It's just a symptom. The larger problem is that they have two different worldviews towards money and that they have not brought them together towards a vision of a rich life whatsoever. Now, is it possible for them to change? Yes, but in my opinion, it's highly unlikely. That's because there's no pressing reason for them to make a change.

If they had children, yeah, maybe they.

Would be forced to change. But unless they have a big, big life change, it's really hard to look inside and interrogate yourself. How was I raised? What do I think about money just alone, much less to do it with a partner and change those dynamics. And in this call, I found that there wasn't much change towards their joint dynamics. One of the key differentiators of people living a rich life and everybody else is that people living a rich life proactively plan before they have to, before they have children or before they go buy a really expensive house, before their back is against the wall. And that is My wish for you in every episode I do, I want to show you the dynamics of a couple who are struggling with some aspect of money so that you can see yourself in there and say, you know what? If we don't start making a bigger shift towards a rich life, boy, we might end up stuck. And as I've always said, I believe it's a tragedy to live a smaller life than you have to. So I have one question for everybody listening today. How would you have handled this conversation differently? What would you have done differently? I would love it if you sent me a note and tell me one thing you would have done differently. You can DM me. You can leave a comment on my Instagram comments. Get on my newsletter@iwt.com and you'll get my email address. Send me a note. I want to hear from you, and I want to know one thing you would have done differently on today's call. Thanks for listening. Here's what you'll find next week on the I will teach you to be rich podcast.

I said, hey, if we want to make this easy, we could just buy flights in business class. And she's like, how much is it? I was like, oh, it's like $6,000 a person.

I barfed.

Absolutely not.

I'm sorry.

I mean, there's like, a real probably messed up satisfaction of being like, I know I spent so long, but I got this thing that everyone else has to pay for, and I got it for less.

And therefore what? I don't know that they.

Therefore, to me, that's a hard line that I'm like, you are going too far. This is bananas. It's like beyond sanity. Please stop.

We are so caught up in playing.

The game now that I just don't. I don't see an end in sight.