273. "We Spend 139% of our Income and still fund our adult kids"

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He said, "I need to talk to you." I thought, "Oh, he's having an affair." He told me he had $50,000 in debt. It got us into a bigger hole.

Fixed costs are at 139%.

Mm-hmm.

Unacceptable.

We are spending more than we make.

It is a grave danger.

I worked really hard to get where I'm at. Then I made stupid decisions about helping my kids out.

I've put us in debt. I should have said there and then, we cannot afford it. We cannot do it. I wasn't brave enough.

I get a text. I have to go pick up my daughter. Can you give me some gas money?

We pay for a decorator to come around and paint the house.

How old is this person?

36.

What the fuck?

I just want to help my kids.

What about helping yourself?

I don't know.

These boundaries are the things that allow you to retire. It's not just about saying no to your kids. It's actually about saying yes to your life. What is going to happen if nothing changes?

Destitute, homeless. We will end up with nothing.

What would you do if you got to your 50s or 60s and you didn't have enough money saved? Today I'm speaking with Mary and Harry. They are 57 and 62 years old. They spend more than they make every single month, and they continue to subsidize their adult children. Just listen to their numbers. I'm going to take a look at their conscious spending plan. Assets: $476,000. Investments: $499,000. Savings: $3,009. Very low. Debt: $435,000. Total net worth, $542,000. Fixed costs, 139%. That's the ballgame. Completely untenable. And with savings of only $3,000, they are essentially hours away from running out of money. What you are seeing here is an extremely dangerous situation. Consider not only is this couple spending more than they make. Not only does this couple have less than $5,000 in savings, this couple is in their 50s and 60s. So time is beyond of the essence. We've got to make huge changes and we've got to make them right now. I will say I am thankful that they came to talk to me because burying your head in the sand is not a strategy. And I hope that we can make some huge changes together. And do it quickly. Now let's meet Mary and Harry. Mary, you wrote something in your application to me that I would like to read. You wrote, the biggest challenge in our relationship is a combination of adult children, broken financial trust, and a severe income imbalance. Most of the financial strain related to the adult children comes from my children, though his children have also contributed at times. Their ongoing crises and financial dependence are draining our resources and putting us at serious financial risk. Is that accurate?

That's very accurate. And he has not read the application.

Is that right?

So he doesn't know what I wrote.

Harry, what's your reaction to that, hearing it for the first time?

Total agreement.

Hmm.

We've helped them. Now we really need to help ourselves.

Okay. What was behind when you wrote that? Where were you and what was happening?

I was incredibly overwhelmed. We have given one of my children quite a bit of money.

How much?

Uh, probably $20,000, $30,000. And the problem is it was out of our HELOC, so it contributed to a huge chunk of debt. And Harry's income is, is inconsistent. Um, so it's hard to manage the finances every month. And, um, it's a huge burden, a burden that I brought on us, a burden that Harry's contributed to. And, and I do the finances, so It was, I was just overwhelmed. I was probably done at that point, you know, ready to do, to escape.

How often do you feel overwhelmed with money?

Most of the time, almost every day. It is always on my mind.

Yeah. You wake up, you think about it, go to work, you think about it, at night you think about it.

Mm-hmm.

What do you feel when you, money is on your mind?

I'm angry at myself for contributing to our financial difficulties, the debt that we're in. And I keep trying to maneuver figures around to see if we can do something better. We don't live outside of our means. We hardly go out to eat. We don't buy a lot of clothes. Harry drives a, what, 2007 Subaru that's held together with duct tape and zip ties, you know? So. I don't know what else to cut.

If you don't live above your means, mm-hmm, what do you think is going on here?

I've made some very poor choices. He's made some very poor choices, and it's very easy to point a finger and blame each other. I think we got ourselves into a big mess with having this HELOC and not using it appropriately. So now we're in a ton of debt. There were instances where Harry was not honest with me about his debt. Um, he recently, about a year ago, told me he had $50,000 in debt. So a lot of decisions we made, or I made, without knowing about that. And so it got us into a bigger hole.

Feels like a lot.

It is a lot.

And Harry, where are you on this? The 50K of debt, what was that?

I was actually 43K in debt. COVID hit me as it did a lot of the population. The big factor is, uh, I ran on several credit cards over a period of time.

What'd you charge on them?

Oh, just living, purchasing flights back to the UK, just general living, uh, supported minimally with the money I was bringing in. Last June, I saw that Mary was struggling with her side of the financial debt, which I've contributed to. And I had to be brave enough, courageous, to tell her where I was at and what I brought to this.

And what was that conversation like? What do you remember about it?

He said, I need to talk to you. And we went outside and sat in the rocking chair under the trees, and I thought, oh, he's having an affair. But thank goodness he wasn't. So I was like, oh God, what is he going to tell me? Um, and he just said— he just spit it out. I think he said $50,000.

And what was your reaction?

Shock. That's a lot of money. Um, I knew he wasn't being truthful about things because he wasn't being forthcoming with money, any, any conversations about money. Just, I couldn't get a straight answer from him. So I guess I wasn't surprised, but I was shocked at the amount of money. But I didn't, I didn't yell or scream at that point.

What did you do?

I told them to research all the different options— bankruptcy, debt consolidation and that we would work through it and we, we'd figure we had to figure something out.

So today, are you better off or worse off?

Uh, the $43K was, uh, immediately dealt with by a debt consolidation company who advised me, us, not to go into bankruptcy. So I followed pursuit of that and they got it down to $21K. Right now I'm at $18,000 with payoffs.

Okay. How long have the two of you been together?

16 years.

16 going on 17.

Married for that long?

No, no. We bought a house together in 2014. So that's when we would say we were common law married, married in a bank.

Are you legally married now? Yes. Are there children involved here?

Yes, we have a blended family. 7 kids all together, all grown. Harry has 3 boys, um, in the UK and a son out here in the States. And then I have, uh, 2 boys. One lives in Australia, one lives close to us, and then a daughter as well. And we also have, um, 5 grandchildren, one on the way, and one of the Grandchildren, we have.

Oh, okay.

We're fostering one of our grandbabies. Yeah.

Got it. Okay, good. How old is that grandchild that you're fostering?

He's almost 5 months.

5 months.

Wow. Yeah.

Okay, great. What role does money play in your relationship?

It's just a big obstacle for our relationship and moving forward and having the life we want to have. We do argue a lot. I feel very lost on how to get out of this big hole and how to talk about it. It is one of the things we argue the most about. We argue about money and we argue about our kids sometimes, but it's usually because of money. Mm-hmm. So it just feels like an obstacle we can't overcome.

Mm.

Yeah.

Would you say that you have been trying to overcome it? Or have you been trying to ignore it?

Both. Um, I try to overcome it, and then I get frustrated, and I ignore it for a long time. And so—

and what about we? I hear you. What about we as a couple?

We talk, but we don't get anywhere. We don't have the answers. We don't know where to go forward. We have our home. It's the— our biggest expense, and It feels like that is what's staring at us in the face. Like, you might not be able to afford this house. But it also feels like even if we sold our house, it would feel like I'm a failure. It really would.

Do you feel like you're a failure with money now?

Yes. Mm-hmm. I feel like I worked really hard to get where I'm at. And then I made stupid decisions about helping my kids out, and it put us in a really bad space. That's my contribution to our debt.

Okay.

Harry, what's the role of money in your relationship?

Well, obviously not speaking with Mary about my financial misuse since revealing to Mary what I'd done on my own to put us in a hole. I felt a massive sense of relief telling Mary that we need to stop the bleeding, work a game plan together, and be hardcore on taking care of ourselves before we take care of anybody else.

Have you done that? What's the game plan that you're working with right now?

Well, in terms of revenue, I work in sports coaching. I've started building up slowly my coaching, private coaching, skills lessons, et cetera, et cetera, which is evolving. I'm generating a lot more income to contribute to the house account.

So you increase your earnings. That's good. Now, Mary, you mentioned that when you talk about money together, that it is frequently combative. Can you think of a time in the last few months where you've had a combative conversation?

It usually happens when I'm stressing about money and I'm like, we have to make more money. We have to figure this out. I started getting on him about what are you doing to get clients? You need to be more aggressive. You need to charge more money for sessions. You can make more money. You know, you just have to go for it a bit more.

Sorry, can we recreate this conversation? Yeah. Who was the one who began that conversation?

Probably me.

Okay, go ahead and speak to him and I'll just listen in.

Harry, you need to make more money. I don't see you working very hard to get clients, and I, and I know that people want you to, to coach them. I know they want clinics, and I just don't see you being aggressive and getting that.

I understand, and I, I, I can see that coming from you.

Is this how the conversation goes?

Yeah.

Are you sure? I'm finding it's hard to believe. I don't think you all talk like this. There's not a single sentence of combativeness in this. I'd never heard a couple talk like this. How does it really go?

Maybe a better conversation would be when we're talking about when I give some money to my son for gas.

Okay, talk about it.

Harry, I gave Patrick $80 for gas because he's helping us. He's coming down to fix your car and he needs gas money.

Okay.

That's it?

I have no choice.

What do you say?

That's what he says.

You say okay and that's it? It's like a pained okay. Is that it?

I'm not in pain over it.

Uh-huh.

From day one, I said, no, we can't afford it.

And then?

I swear it's now $30,000+ I said no to both of them. We cannot afford it. We cannot do it. The hidden part of that was still I'd not revealed to Mary my current. So there's a, there's a balance there of I've put us in debt, here's another one coming. I should have said there and then. That was a moment for me to be— I wasn't brave enough.

So is the idea, I, Harry, kept this secret, $50,000 in debt, and therefore who am I to say you can't help yourself.

Right, right.

Okay.

I should have been stronger and I wasn't.

Okay.

So what is the dynamic happening here?

I would do it anyway. I would justify it. There's a granddaughter involved, which makes it really hard not to help out. And that's not good for our relationship, obviously. So I don't know how to say no to my kids. And I would justify it, I just wanna help 'em. I just wanna help 'em.

You still don't know how to say no as of today, right?

And I still struggle. I'm in therapy to learn how to say no.

And—

How long have you been doing that?

Mm, just recently. I don't like seeing my kids struggle. I don't wanna see my son lose access to our granddaughter, which would mean we would lose access to her, you know? And if he doesn't, have a working vehicle. How's he gonna work? How's he gonna see her? And, um, I'm making decisions based on emotion, and it's really hard.

When you zoom out and you look at that conversation that you had, what role did each of you play?

I played the aggressor, um, the boss. We need more money, you need to make more money.

And then when it came to spending on your son, the sold decider, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Here's what's happening, okay? And Harry, what role did you play?

I just let it bypass me.

You just said okay, in one ear, out the other? Yeah, sort of like whatever. Yeah, hands up, whatever. And what about the part about the you need to earn more money? What role did you play in that?

I didn't really have a role. I just laid down and took what was coming my way. Yeah, because of self Ah, just selfishness, guilt over what I had done. Mm-hmm.

What do you notice about both of your roles when you're talking to each other about money in your relationship? What do you notice?

There's no game plan between us.

Yes. What else?

At first, I'll try to be nice. I don't want to hurt Harold's feelings, so I'll be— I'll walk softly, and then I get frustrated.

What I noticed is both of you take a self-centered approach. It's all about you.

Okay.

You have the thing you want to accomplish out of the conversation. Mary, you want to tell him he needs to earn more money or pay for your kids in some way, and that's what's going to happen. You're just going to tell him. Harry, you are uncomfortable with these conversations, and so in your mind, like you said, I just lay down and take it because I want it to be over. You're not actually having a conversation. It's the chaser, the avoider. It's one person being the aggressor, the other passive, and just hurry up, let's get this over with. You can't be a team when you have this dynamic. It doesn't matter what the numbers look like. I would like to take a look at your numbers before I put them up. What was it like to create the conscious spending plan together?

I did it. And when I needed a number from him, I would just say, "Harry, what's this?" Why didn't you do it together?

Isn't that the instructions?

Because it's easier if I do it. I don't know if we would have done it unless I did it.

I didn't know when Mary was doing it.

Mm-hmm.

So I felt I was being left out.

Did you invite him to do the CSP together?

Um, probably not. I probably just did it. I know he didn't want to do this.

Ah, so, okay, got it.

So is this a decision?

This is a common thing?

Yes.

What are you noticing? You look kind of embarrassed right now. What's going on? Right? What are you realizing?

Um, I make decisions for us. Yep. And then I say, this is what we're doing because I want to do it.

Mm-hmm. And then Harry doesn't participate, in part because I don't think you really like money, or at least managing money. But also you both have a dynamic where you don't invite him. So he goes, great, she didn't invite me. I trust her. You know what you're doing. You're good with money, even though you're not. And so each person goes off into their own corner and does their thing. Meanwhile, what happens to the money? It just gets spent. Mary and Harry are in a self-reinforcing loop that is very difficult to get out of. Mary likes to have control, so she manages the money. By the way, she's not particularly good at it. Harry feels guilty about money because he has the secret spending, so he doesn't want to say anything about money. It's not even his place. So he goes, oh, you're so good at it, babe, you handle it. So then Mary feels alone. She's now forced to manage the money poorly Again. Oh, and by the way, she can't say no to anybody, so she just ends up giving everybody a bunch of money. Do you see how it's like a snowball and it just builds on itself? It gets faster and bigger, except the bigger it gets, the worse it gets for them. This is very difficult to escape from, but I need them to see this dynamic so that they can get out of it. We're going to take a look at their numbers right after this. Okay. I need to take you behind the scenes of how we make this podcast work. So that it shows up every Tuesday for you. We've got a full production team that manages finding and interviewing potential couples. They edit, they produce the actual recordings. We are constantly sending emails internally and to our guests, which used to take up a ton of time, but now it's easier because we use Superhuman Mail. Superhuman Mail is an AI-native inbox tool that helps you stay ahead. And as part of the Superhuman productivity suite, Superhuman Mail AI keeps you one step ahead by automatically drafting replies, organizing priorities, and surfacing what matters most. Now they have everything you'd expect from a premium inbox tool. They've got auto archive to remove clutter, split inboxes to make sure that you see the important emails and auto drafts, which is amazing to help draft and send emails already in your own voice. I love that everything is connected. Using keyboard shortcuts so I can fly through dozens of emails, sometimes hundreds of emails, in just minutes. The entire IWT team uses and loves Superhuman Mail, and I think you're going to love it too. Set it up once and stay in control. Sign up for Superhuman Mail today at superhuman.com/podcast. Very common scenario I see when I talk to couples with kids on the podcast, a young couple struggling to afford their day-to-day lives, but they will not stop contributing to their kids' 529s. I get it. Parents want to provide for their kids, but a 529 is not the only option. One thing you may want to consider is term life insurance from Fabric by Gerber Life. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today. It's made for busy parents like you, all online, on your schedule, right from your couch. You could be covered in under 10 minutes, often with no health exam required. And if you've got kids, especially if you're young and healthy, now is the best time to lock in low rates. Even if you have life insurance through work, it may be less than what your family needs. And if you change jobs, it could disappear. Plus, Fabric has flexible, high-quality policies to fit your family's needs, all with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/ramit. meetfabric.com/ramit and use my link so they know I sent you. meetfabric.com/ramit. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Let's take a look at the numbers. Mary, can you read off the word in bold and the number next to it, please, for this entire box?

Assets is $476,000. Investments is $499,924,000. Savings is $3,009. Debt is $435,978 for a total net worth of $542,955.

Okay. What do you think about those numbers?

Well, I guess it was about what I thought it would be.

And when you look at these numbers, do you feel anything?

Oh, that's, uh, we need a lot more in savings. And obviously, if we, if I want to retire at 65, we need to increase our investments quite a bit too. Okay. What scares me is we have the mortgage, so, um, and it's a 30-year mortgage, which we've been paying on not that long. So we'll be in our 80s paying a mortgage, and that to me is not— we can't do that.

Okay. So, Harry, what do you think about these numbers?

They're not very good for the future, should we wish to retire, if we even can.

What part concerns you the most?

I think being locked into the house, knowing that I'm not going to live for 30 years.

Let's take a look at the rest of the numbers. Okay. Harry, can you read off the combined monthly gross income?

$7,850.

Okay, great. So I understand that that number is variable, but let's take it as an average.

Okay.

So that means combined, the two of you— do you know your household income? Annual household income? $94,000. Did you know that?

Around that.

Uh-huh. Harry, what'd you think it was? Yeah. Yeah?

Yeah.

I was thinking around $95,000, as I make $76,000, and then, you know.

All right, shall we look at the rest of the numbers? So fixed costs. Mary, what's that number there?

$139,000. Yeah, that's, that's what freaked me out.

What does that tell you?

That we are spending more than we make.

Every month.

Yep.

Every month. Yeah.

You are spending far more than you make every single month. Yeah, that is the ball game. Yes, that's it. Nothing else matters right there. That is why you feel anxious about money. That is why you are running out of money. And considering that you have $3,000, do you know how long you can last?

About a week, 2 weeks. 2 weeks. Yeah, and we have a little less than that now.

Yeah, so it is a grave danger. Let's continue. Investments are at 8%. Your savings are at 14%. Let me take a big guess. Let me guess that in the last 2 to 3 months, you've started contributing money to your savings. True or false?

False.

Tell me. I love to be surprised.

Ramit Sethi automatically take money and it automatically goes into my savings account.

Then why is there only $3,000 in your savings?

Because then I use that. To cover your kids, the kids, whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

And then finally we have guilt-free spending at— what's that number?

Negative 6%.

61%.

61%.

You are spending, yeah, 61% extra, at least $3,000 per month than you make.

Yeah.

What does all this tell you?

Well, it's not sustainable. Sometimes I feel it's not that bad.

Why do you think it's not so bad?

Well, and I shouldn't say, in December we refinanced the house and we put the HELOC and what I owed on one of our cars into one loan. Mm-hmm. Oh, and the credit card debt. So now we don't have credit card debt.

Mm-hmm.

So this is why you think it's not so bad.

So it doesn't feel that bad because I can pay the credit cards every month. But in reality, it's all now tacked on to our mortgage. It was about probably another $100,000 when it was all said and done, added to our mortgage. Yeah.

What do you think about that?

It feels like we're never gonna get that paid off.

You want me to be honest with you? You probably won't.

Yeah.

Not the way you treat money today.

Yeah.

What is going to happen if nothing changes?

Destitute, homeless, um, just miserable and looking forward to death.

I'm not amused. I'm taking this more seriously than you are.

I'm right on track with that because we have absolutely— we would— we have absolutely nothing. And nothing to look forward to.

That's not true. That's not true. You are engaging in hyperbole to avoid the reality of the situation because it's easy to say destitute and we have nothing. You have $499,000 in investments. You have a $476,000 asset. You have some kind of pension. So it's actually disrespectful to simply say destitution. We have nothing.

No.

Engage in reality. Be specific. What is going to happen if you make no changes? I want exact specifics of what is going to happen.

If nothing changes, we will end up with nothing.

How long?

A year.

A year?

I'm just throwing that out there. If we go on like we are going, seeing those numbers up there, we'd be dipping into, which we have been, to everything we've got just to continue down that pathway of oblivion.

You don't look at numbers frequently, do you?

I do, but not in depth. If, if I have a dollar, can I make it two? Could I make it five?

Yeah.

And I think we have that, we just don't know how to do it.

No, you You don't have that. I'm looking at the same numbers you are.

Okay.

You do not have some magical way to quintuple your money. No. If you were 25, you would, because you just let it sit in the market. You are not 25. You are in your 50s and 60s. So that's not happening. What you have is very simple math. I will never ask anyone to do complex math on this show. It costs you about $7,000 a month just to keep the lights on.

Mm-hmm.

You have $500,000. So even if we go like a full year with no income, you could theoretically draw from your investments, all of it, and you could still go years just coasting off your investments. Now, would I do that? No, that would be extremely dumb. But we need to be living in reality with these numbers. So Harry, when you say like we have a year, maybe— no, just looking at these numbers, $500,000, it costs you $7,000 a month just to keep the lights on, which is like, let's just say about $90,000, $100,000 a year. That's at least 5 years purely based on investments.

Okay.

Okay, Mary, what happens if you change nothing?

We're just going to continue how we are, not not making ends meet. I mean, we'll be able to live for a while, but it'll still be stressful. We won't be able to live our lives that we want to live, travel, go out to eat once in a while, you know, and eventually it'll catch up to us. I don't know how long, but I won't be bringing in the money when I retire. We're still going to be overspending every month. And the reality is when you get older, it costs more to live because of healthcare expenses and whatnot. So it'll just be a stressful existence.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Will it be better or worse than you are today?

Worse.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we have to replace his car at some point. That's more debt. We don't have money to replace his car. We have old appliances in our house. Eventually we're gonna have to replace this. I mean, so all this stuff continues, so. It'll be this— it'll be the same as what we're doing now.

It'll be worse.

It'll be worse.

Far worse.

Yeah.

I don't want that for you.

I don't either.

What would happen in this scenario where you change nothing, we fast forward a few years, and one of your kids calls you up and says they need help with a $10,000 car repair? What would you do?

Um, I couldn't help them.

What would you say to them?

I would say, no, I can't. And then I'd probably try to figure out what I could do. You know, I can give you $5,000 because I have $3,000 in savings, or we put it on the credit card. Again, I'm in therapy for creating boundaries, so I hope I would be able to say no.

It's a really tough situation.

I just want to help my kids. They had a tough life.

So what about helping yourself?

Yes. I would like to help myself too.

Who comes first?

My kids.

I appreciate the honesty. I would like to understand a little bit about how you grew up with money. Mary, you mentioned your kids had a tough upbringing. I would like to go back to your childhood. What do you remember your family saying about money when you were a kid?

Not much. Um, my father worked Very hard. Um, and my mom was for the most part a stay-at-home mom.

What part of the country did you grow up in?

Colorado.

Okay.

Yeah, but my dad's from Cuba, so he was the provider and my mom was the homemaker. And my mom spent a lot of money, and my dad would complain about her spending money. Um, and he was in international sales, so he'd go out of town quite a bit, and then she'd go spend money on what she wanted.

And when he came back, Would they fight?

Yeah, they didn't fight too much in front of us, but yeah.

And was the fight serious, or was it like, we're each playing our role and it's kind of cute? Which one was it?

No, they get serious about it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Are they still alive? Still married?

My— yeah, still married. Married almost 60 years, but my dad died a couple years ago, passed away a couple years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So How is your mom with money?

Awful. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

How so?

Uh, well, for instance, we went to the garden center the other day and she spent over $300 on plants, and that was like her third trip to the garden center.

So how does she afford it?

She makes okay money, fixed income, you know, from retirement, my dad's pension, whatnot. But not enough. She'll probably run out of money.

What does she say? You talk about money?

Yeah, we talk about money.

Oh, what do you say? That's good.

It's hard. My mom's so nice. It's hard to tell her to stop spending money on the plants. You know, I'm like, Mom, I'll plant seeds for you. But she spends a ton of money on her dog. Is she religious? Yes.

Are you religious?

Um, sort of. Okay. Yeah.

She believe God will provide?

No, no, no. She's Catholic.

So wait, what? Hold on. I'm not familiar. I know Catholicism, but Catholics don't believe God will provide?

Not really. Not like that. What do they believe? Hard work and, you know, helping yourself. Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting, because she's spending money. You know that she's going to run out of it. You talk to her about money, but what's the disconnect?

She grew up in a very— not a rich household, but a well-to-do household north of Chicago. She was the baby, and my grandfather would give her the credit card and take the train to Chicago and go shopping. So, wow.

So your mom was the somewhat wealthy daughter, daughter of somewhat wealthy family. She gets married. She likes to spend money when her husband, your dad, is out of town. You spend money you don't have as well. And now your kids, do they spend money they don't have as well?

Yes, I would say so.

How many generations are we talking about?

3.

Have you ever realized that you have multiple generations engaging in the same overspending?

I noticed it with my kids. I mean, I noticed it with my mom, but I didn't think I was like my mom. But apparently I am.

You noticed it with your kids and your mom, but me? No, not me. Okay, so just now you've realized there is a pattern linking 3 generations.

Mm-hmm.

What do you feel? When you realize that for the first time, age 57, what are you realizing? What are you feeling?

I'm still overwhelmed by it all. I'm just— I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do.

Okay.

We have to fix it.

Yes. What do you feel before you get to solutions? Are you happy? Sad? Dissatisfied? Disgusted? Confused.

I just wanted to stop.

Yeah, tell me more.

I don't— I'm not supposed to cry. Um, been working really hard to just get us on stable ground, so— and then I feel like, and maybe this is where my mom comes from, you know, you've been working so hard, why can't you go out to dinner and— or you know, because you don't have any money, it'll go on the credit card. Well, so what? I just— we deserve to go out to dinner once in a while.

Did your mom say that before?

No, she just does it, just like I do, I guess.

This sounds familiar. She just does it.

That makes her sound really selfish, and she's not. She buys for everybody too.

Oh, she's generous with other people. Too generous, maybe.

Oh yeah. Yes, very much so.

That sounds familiar too.

Mm-hmm.

What are you noticing?

That we're very similar.

Yes. And?

And we spend too much money. Sometimes we won't spend, spend, spend, and then I'll spend money that I shouldn't spend because I feel like we're owed it. Like, why not? I work so hard. Why can't I?

Do you realize this before now?

I mean, I would say that I deserve it. I work really, really hard. I deserve to have whatever it is.

And do your kids also deserve nice things too?

Yes and no. They deserved nice things when they were younger and I couldn't give it to them.

It's hard to talk about.

Yeah, it is hard.

Okay, I appreciate you doing it. It's not supposed to be easy here, but that doesn't make it feel good sometimes.

It was hard for them. A single mom, and I waited tables. I worked two jobs. I put myself through school. And they've had lights turned out, you know, electricity cut off from them. We moved them into a better neighborhood, but then we were the poor family in the better neighborhood. So that was hard for them. We didn't take vacations. We didn't do anything. And I just— it was hard for them.

Keep going. It was hard for them because what?

Because they didn't get the things that they should have gotten. And they had to go through living in all of us crammed into a 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom apartment and moving and hustling because our car is broken down here and I don't have the money to fix it.

And what's the problem with that?

It was hard. Their friends went on vacations. Their friends got cars. Their friends had clothes. They didn't have to shop at the thrift store before it was trendy, you know.

So what?

Yeah.

Can I— I'm asking legitimately.

Yeah.

Things were hard for them. What's the problem with that?

They didn't get the opportunities.

I don't think that's what you're talking about. I think you are referring to they didn't get things, things that other people had around them.

Yes.

And so what is the problem with that?

Because it was embarrassing for them.

For them.

For me too. Not being able to provide for them.

Yes. Do you remember at the beginning when we were talking about your dynamics and I pointed out that when the two of you talk about money, you are both behaving in a blank way? What was the word I used?

Self-centered.

Self-centered.

Yes.

When you tell yourself this narrative about your kids, I'm sure they had a somewhat challenging upbringing. Okay. I'm not diminishing that. But we trace back. So what? So what?

Why?

So what? And it turns out that it was embarrassing for me.

Yeah, it was embarrassing not having a car that worked or having food stamps or whatever. That's embarrassing.

Yeah.

And now when you look back, is it a source of embarrassment still?

Yes and no. No, because I worked really hard. I, like I said, I worked 2 jobs, which then I wasn't there for my kids. So that was an issue too. But I worked very, very hard. I thought I set a good example for them, like, you know, work hard, go to school, do all your stuff. And, and I don't know.

I just want to share an example from my own childhood. My parents, immigrants from India. My mom stayed home, dad worked. We didn't have a lot of stuff. We had a middle-class lifestyle. We almost never went on vacation. It was like a road trip. And yeah, like, kids had fancier clothes and, you know, they looked cooler. Indian kids, they don't look that cool by design. Parents are like, focus, study. You can look cool later. We certainly didn't have the cool shoes and all that stuff. And the story that our family embodies is, yeah, we're not going to have as much stuff as some other people, but we love each other and we're going to work hard. They taught us to study. They taught us to get into great schools. Even if we didn't have money, they taught us how to be street smart so we could get financial aid. And when I look back, I'm glad I didn't have all that stuff. Like, if I wore the clothes back then that I wear now, where do you go from there? So I like the adversity that I went through. What do you make of that?

We've actually talked about that kind of stuff before, and, and my kids feel that they have more of appreciation for things, that not everything was handed to them. Although I probably, to be honest, would have handed it to them if I could. And also, I think one of my kids just doesn't care. Like, he wears it as a badge of honor.

That—

what do you make of this?

I guess maybe I just have avoided all of it for so long Of course you have. Yeah.

It's easier to write $25,000 checks to kids and to spend on HELOCs and eating out and all kinds of stuff than to confront some tough stuff. To me, the story you've been telling yourself is one story, but there's a perfectly acceptable alternative story of, yeah, things were tough, and thank God they were, because my kids learned not everything comes easy. Yeah, that's a very powerful story. You choose. The story you chose is what?

The— that it was embarrassing.

It was embarrassing. They never had enough, and therefore I have to live in penance for the rest of my life. Here, take everything I've got because I was a failure, and I won't let that— I was embarrassed, and I'm still embarrassed. Please take it all.

Yeah, there's a lot of guilt there.

It's so disempowering to you and to them and to Harry. Something to think about and maybe work on in therapy. What do you think?

Absolutely, yes. I know.

Cool.

I enable my children, especially my one child.

Okay.

Yeah. All right.

Thank you for walking me through how you grew up with money. Eye-opening. I appreciate that. Do you hear the story that Mary tells herself? It's a pretty powerful one. It's a pretty painful one, too. What I notice is that she has carried that pain through to today, and it's almost as if she feels so guilty that she is going to go the rest of her life trying to make up for it. That is no way to live life, feeling like you are behind, feeling like you are trying to atone for something you did wrong. You could never even get up to just neutral. I guess I just think about it differently. When I hear people going through some sort of adversity, especially one where they came out stronger, I think to myself, how fortunate that you were able to get that lesson. We don't all get lessons of adversity that we come out stronger for on the other end. But if you were able to get that lesson or give that lesson, what a blessing. That's why sometimes when people come on this show, and I have tough conversations, sometimes they cry, or sometimes they don't like me for a while. What a blessing. What a gift that I could give them to have someone be honest with them, maybe for the first time in many, many years. When I look back at my own life, I remember not being good at math, especially compared to my friends starting in 7th grade. My mom used to pick me up from middle school, and she could tell what my math grade was based on how low my head was when I was walking down the little field to the car. And I know that I wasn't good. My friends were a lot better than I was. And I look back and I think to myself, wow, I learned early on that I was never going to be great at math, but I really tried. I busted my ass. I worked really hard to try to at least get to neutral. And now I know that is not a strength area for me. Okay, what a great way to look back and tell that story. And my wish for Mary is that she looks back at the way she raised her kids and maybe just has a totally different interpretation. Maybe it goes something like this: I was a single mom. It was really hard. I wish I could have done more for my kids, but I did the very best I could. You get to choose your story. And Mary and Harry are a great example of that. One of my coworkers mentioned that she has been struggling with anxiety. She went online, she found a place called Grow Therapy, and she booked a therapist that worked around her schedule. And she even mentioned she feels really taken care of. If you've been thinking about getting therapy, this is your sign to check out Grow Therapy, this episode's sponsor. Grow Therapy makes it easy to find a therapist that fits you, not the other way around. They make it easy to search by what matters, by identity, specialty, availability, insurance coverage, all of those, so you can find a therapist that's the right fit for you. And from there, they connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering in-person or virtual sessions, including on evenings and weekends. If there's something in your life you'd like to change, Grow Therapy can help you start. There's no subscription, there's no long-term commitment. You just book and pay per session with free cancellation up to 24 hours before your appointment. The therapist you want takes your insurance on Grow. Grow accepts over 125 insurance plans, and sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com/Ramit Sethi today to get started. That's growtherapy.com/Ramit. Growtherapy.com/Ramit. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. When I was starting my business, if someone had told me about infrastructure and systems, I would have just ignored them, honestly. But years later, I can look back and see the wisdom of having simple business systems. I have literally spent millions of dollars disentangling bad systems that we put into IWT along the way. So if you have the chance to start your business in a simple way, I recommend checking out NetSuite. NetSuite is the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects all of your data. Trusted by over 43,000 customers, NetSuite brings your financials, inventories, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth. And now with NetSuite Next, you can automatically surface custom insights with AI agents working alongside you to solve problems, answer questions, and even handle routine work. NetSuite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way your business works. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite Next, where your business meets AI. If I'd had this system back when I was building IWT, it would have changed everything for me. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the 7 figures, go to netsuite.ai/ramit. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. netsuite.ai/ramit. Harry, what about you? What do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?

It was important, but I came up from a total working class background. My father was a coal miner, and we always had holidays in the same place in Scotland every year growing up. My dad would go to work, come home, didn't do what the other people did, go to the bar or the local miners' community and stuff. Uh, we wanted for nothing. We didn't have a lot. My father was very astute with money, so I lived on an estate, a neighborhood that wasn't in the mining community. So I knew later on in life that they'd saved and, and, and bought that house. It had orchards and apple trees and all the good stuff. From the age of 10, school holidays, I'd be sent to work on the local farms, potato picking. I was taught to graft and work hard. I earned very good money. We decided after a period of years to purchase a house together. I started drinking heavily and I stopped working hard, which is what everything I'd been taught to do. I'm 6 years into dry. Wow. Congratulations. But what it took out of me was I stopped—

Stopped working?

Yeah. Yeah.

And what about beyond the work? Did it change you here, your mindset?

Yeah.

What did it do?

I became very insular and isolated.

Yeah.

I became very enclosed and not speaking with Mary about the start of my financial use, irregular use of credit cards. There was no income.

Did you used to be open about money?

We were reasonably open. I have money in England through my trust and finance and inheritance money, which we've now come to a resolution of numbers and figures on exactly what I've got over there.

Really? What is it?

Well, I'm 68. It'll be $360,000.

So this is an inheritance you have that will mature at age 68? Why 68?

That enrolls into my UK pension plan, which gives me more money because I'm 10 years short of a full UK pension.

So at 68, will you get the full cash amount?

That will mature.

And you'll be able to get the full amount?

Yeah. Okay.

Is it accounted for in the Conscious Spending plan?

I wasn't involved in it, so I would say no.

Okay.

No, I asked you.

Did you?

Oh. Is it in there? Mary?

I think so.

So we have investments at $499,000.

That's including yours, I believe. Yeah.

Okay, so that's $340,000 of his plus $150,000 of the two of you. Is that correct?

No, I have more than that.

Okay.

I want to say I have $250,000 at least.

Yeah, $250,000. So what's with the other $250,000 here?

That must be Harry's.

Do you see why you doing this on your own is not working?

I do. I have no clue what I put there or why when I did this.

Exactly. Now listen, I'm not trying to come down on you. I want to just tell you the dynamic because I see this all the time. This is so common. We have the person who's not involved with the money, Harry. Then we have the person who spends hours and hours. They're involved. They often create multiple spreadsheets. They got all these forms and confusing things. They have their own weird system. Sound familiar, Mary? And yet they are not skilled with money and they cannot answer basic questions. And that very person is the one who takes on all the anxiety, but they are not skilled at all. Mary, this is you.

Yes.

Can't answer basic questions about investments. It's not acceptable. It's actually not acceptable for the two of you to be in this dynamic. We have one person doing the money who does not know what she's doing, and it explains why you all are getting nowhere. You're only going down. I'm going to assume that this is accounted for in this investment part of the CSP, both of your investments. Which actually makes these numbers even more troubling.

Okay.

Because without Harry's $250,000, y'all have even less invested. A quarter million dollars less. So after an entire career, that's it. $250,000. What does that tell you?

I didn't invest. Yeah, though it started late, the retirement. I've emptied my retirement before, so It tells me that I'm not going to retire.

Before you get to the solutions, what does it tell you about your behavior?

Um, in avoidance mode. Even though I worry and juggle numbers all the time, I really don't have a grasp of it.

Yes. How long have you been worrying about money? Forever, right?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

And now it's become second nature to you. It actually is a familiar feeling. If you were to not worry, who would you be?

I have no idea. Exactly.

That's what a worrier always says. And so worrying has now become your familiar friend. And that worry now allows you to— you treat it as responsibility. You see worrying as I'm responsible with money. And then at the same time, you go and write $25,000 checks that you don't have the money for. But I'm worried. So, like, I must be responsible. No, it's a vicious cycle you've put yourself in. And then, Harry, ignoring the money, not talking about the money compounds it. Okay, Mary, earlier you said, I'm not supposed to cry.

Why?

Because it's embarrassing.

Huh?

I don't think it's embarrassing.

It is.

I think it's real.

Only person I feel comfortable crying around is Harry.

Okay, this stuff is hard. And, uh, I actually kind of love that you felt it was embarrassing and you did it anyway, because I like when people sometimes do stuff that feels embarrassing. That's what it takes to be good. And that's actually probably what you're both gonna have to do.

Great.

And that's okay, because sometimes, as you put, Harry, you're in a hole And if you want to figure out how to get out of that hole, you can't do things the way you've done it.

Mm-hmm.

Embarrassing. So what? I cried in front of tons of people. I'm still here.

Yeah.

So what?

It's embarrassing being here.

I would say it's bold. So many times I hear you choosing one narrative when I would just choose a totally different one. That's embarrassing to cry. No, it's honest. It's embarrassing to be here. No, it's bold and courageous. I don't know which one is right, but since I get to choose my story, I'm going to choose the empowering one.

I like that.

Yeah, you can do the same thing.

Yeah.

Okay. What role does guilt play in your financial decisions?

We parent our adult children with a lot of guilt. Yeah. And we want to help them and it brings chaos into our lives.

You have chaos in your life?

Yeah.

Yeah. You agree, Harry?

Yeah.

All right.

You like it?

No. We love our grandson though, right now. But no, I think you like it. You think we thrive on chaos?

Yes.

I'm exhausted. So I really want some peace.

What would you be willing to do to get that peace?

I want to say anything, but I'd keep helping my children, and they always come to us knowing that that will help.

When was the last time you said no?

No, I don't know.

Harry, when was the last time she said no?

I don't think there is a last time currently. I understand why But it— they're not gonna love you any less for saying no. And they all know what— what a fantastic mother you are anyway. I see it all. And it's commendable. But it hurts us. You have the ability to say no without any guilt. Because you've done more than enough for 5 families.

Because of how stuck they are in their stories, I want to try something radically different. There's a phenomenon in psychology called inoculation theory, and they used to use it with kids, teaching them how to say no to smoking. So you know what they would do? This is in the '80s. They would bring them up in front of the room and they would have one kid go up to them and say, hey kid, you need to smoke a cigarette. This is what the cool kids do. And then the other kid would go, No, I don't like to smoke. It's not good for my health. And they would inoculate themselves by creating a small argument against smoking. And so when the real-life thing happened and they got bullied or peer pressured to smoke, they would know exactly what to say. They were already inoculated. So I want them to take that principle and apply it here. I want them to get out of their own heads and start to give my wife and me advice for what we should do. You know why it works? Because people love to give other people advice. Let me ask you this. My wife and I have come to you for advice. We're not in a good financial position. We are approaching retirement, a few years away. We don't know if we can retire. We have a mortgage. It's a lot. I don't know if we're ever going to pay it off. We have debt we've taken out on the mortgage. Our income is inconsistent. We have 5 kids and they're adults, and they come to us and we love them and we try to help them. And sometimes we give them money, and sometimes we babysit, and sometimes we help them get a new appliance. We never really have taken a look at ourselves, our own money, because we've been so busy with the chaos. Seems like we take one step forward and two steps back. My wife and I fight. We fight because we love our kids. We want to make sure they're okay. I'm starting to think that I don't know what to do because our time is running out. What advice do you have for us?

I would say let your kids stand on their own two feet, and they're adults.

But I love them.

And so stop enabling them and let them figure it out.

I love them.

And you can still love them.

But they need my help.

And you can love them by letting them be adults.

I just— I feel so guilty.

Why?

They had a tough childhood, and I want to give them everything that they didn't have.

See, that's why I trip up. Um, They're adults. You give them, you give them love. You gave them everything you could at the time, and you still are. And now you need to focus on yourself.

So, so what am I supposed to do next time they come to me for help? I'm supposed to just slam the door in their face and kick them out?

No.

What do I do?

Just tell them you'll help them, you know, figure out solutions, but you are not fixing it for them.

I don't know how to do that. They come to me for help. I'm their dad. I'm gonna give them every last cent, every last scrap off my back to help them. That's what a parent does, right?

No.

Oh, what, what do I do?

Parent helps their child learn how to navigate the world and stand on their own two feet, and they have to figure out things for themselves. If you keep fixing it for them, they're never going to figure it out.

And what about my wife? She's not involved with the money. I don't know, we don't really talk about money. What do you think I should do with her?

Sit down and have conversations, go over numbers.

I try to, but it's easier to do it myself. Harry, what advice do you have for me?

You gotta sit down and have a coming together with your wife.

I try to, but she doesn't even want to look at the spreadsheet.

Well, you're gonna have to sit her down, make her a cup of tea, and just tell her straight on. And then do it tomorrow and then do it the day after and then say, this is really serious, I need this to happen. We need to be together for our children because we love them and it's going to be the best thing for everyone. Physically, we can help them, we can babysit, we can go around and paint some doors or something along those lines. But what we can't do is pay for a decorator to come around and paint the house or the doors or get a guy in to service the whatever, but we can do the best we can. But we have to, have to be together on this.

Okay, what the fuck? How are you so good at giving me advice?

He actually says that to me. I've already—

am I in a different planet right now? What just happened?

I just read my own script.

That was quite outstanding. Now Stay with me, everybody.

Let's rock.

What if we just flipped it and you took your own advice for a second? All jokes aside.

No, yes.

Let's live there for a second, because what you just did was almost miraculous. You got out of your own heads. You saw things for the reality of the situation. My wife and I in this scenario are in big financial trouble. Mary, you were honest. You were relentless. You love them. You can't help them do everything. Can I flip that to you?

Yes.

You love— actually, say it to yourself.

I love them, but I can't do everything.

Yes. Now I'm going to ask you a few probing questions. So what are you going to do if your kid comes to you and asks for help because their stove broke down?

I would say, I understand how that feels. Let's brainstorm and see what ideas you have, but money-wise, we can't help you.

That's quite amazing. You looked uncomfortable doing it, but you did it anyway.

Mm-hmm.

That's pretty cool. What'd that feel like?

I would do it for a stove.

I—

it's hard when I get a text, I don't have any money, I have to go pick up my daughter, can you give me some gas money. What the fuck? And then I do.

Oh, I'll fix that for you right now. Give me your phone. I'll turn off giving money on there. I don't even know how to do that. Do you know nobody in my life would text me for money like that? I want you to hear how abnormal that sounds to me. That is not the relationship that I have allowed myself to be in. So are you hearing how weird That sounds to me—

I'm an ATM.

Yes. And instead of love, it's money. What if you just didn't reply honestly? What would happen?

Maybe that means he doesn't get his daughter. But maybe next time he'll figure it out.

Do you have any texts on your phone right now begging for money? Because I would love to reply to them for you. I specialize in writing other people's texts. Is there one?

On our way coming into here. This is not me grassing up, and I laugh about it because it's insane.

Uh-huh.

He's taking care of our grandson at our house, but he went up to his house, forgot the formula to feed him, arrived back at our house, said, hey, Mom, I've forgot the formula. I haven't got enough gas to get back home and get back down.

How old is this person?

36.

Okay.

And I'm not slam dunking anybody here, and that's why I laugh insanely in madness.

So he said, will you pay me for the gas to go back?

No, but it was— he hasn't got enough gas, so we gave him money to go to the store to get formula to feed him.

I get it. Yeah, you all get this. You all have heard these stories about about, you know, parents get to be 80 years old, 85. They have no money, they're living in a trailer, and there are other— maybe there's one or two responsible siblings, and they're going, Mom, Dad, you don't understand. When you die, this guy doesn't know how to hold down a job. He hasn't had a job in 45 years. And Mom and Dad don't know how to deal with this. They have a deep, daunting realization that they have truly screwed up their kids., but they don't know what to do because now it feels too late. They are embedded, entrenched. How far are we away from that happening right now?

That's our story, isn't it?

Pretty much, yes.

How could you allow this to happen?

I don't know. Misplaced guilt and wanting to help. Misplaced ways of helping.

But it's happening as recently as today. Are you willing to change it?

I have to. I mean, I— if I don't, then he's gonna— yeah.

Yes, I want to. I mean, I think when I'm looking for someone to make a radical change, the only acceptable answer is I'll do anything. The path you have to go on, the two of you, is so difficult, so different than anything you've ever done, that the only acceptable answer is I'll do anything. Otherwise you have no chance of succeeding, right?

That's what I was afraid of.

Your worst fear is going to be your reality. You might as well just accept it.

Yeah.

I want to give you a break. I want to give you 5 minutes. Go outside, think about it, talk about it. Because if you actually want to make a change, it is going to require you to change every single thing about the way that you interact with each other and you interact with your kids, starting today. You will not be able to give them money. There is no money. You will not be able to volunteer to help them with all these things. You will make a list of what you can offer. We can babysit twice a week. We can help with X. Here are the things we will no longer be able to assist with at all, cold turkey. And here are the consequences of you pushing us. If you text us for money this is what will happen. If you— something breaks down and you expect us to help, this is what will happen. That's the easiest change you're going to have to make. The other stuff, we haven't even gotten to your numbers. That's going to be even harder. If you can do that, you might have a chance with your finances. Can we take 5 minutes and come back?

Yes, please.

Okay, let's do it.

You okay? Yeah.

I empathize with how they both grew up with money, not particularly healthy environments. The problem is Mary and Harry are living in those stories. I've always said that people who have problems love to talk about their problems. I see it every day, and I don't mind. I need to empathize. I need to connect with them and hear what's going on. But at a certain point, we cannot live in those stories in the past because it will not allow you to move forward. Have you ever done this? Have you ever talked about your problems over and over again? What was it? Money problem, relationship problem, fitness problem, any kind of problem? We all do it. It's a human thing. But if we want to change and if Mary and Harry want to change, I got to get them to see things a totally different way. How come everybody teaches you how to save, but nobody teaches you the skill of spending money meaningfully? It's a tragedy to end up older and older, having atrophied at the skill of using your money to live a rich life. I need you to take this seriously. And if you need help planning your retirement and you want to go into scenarios and more specificity, Check out Facet. Facet can help you make a plan that lets you use your money for the moments that matter to you. Facet charges a flat membership fee for financial planning, never a percentage of your assets. And you get access to a team of CFP professionals— always a CFP, always a fiduciary— who help you create a personalized financial plan that meets you where you are. They can help with big things like investments, moving across the country, saving for kids' college, traveling in retirement, estate planning, all of it. Your financial plan should match up with your rich life vision, and Facet can help make that possible without the exorbitant fees. As of the date of this recording, Facet is waiving the enrollment fee for new annual members. And for my audience, Facet is offering $300 into your brokerage account if you invest and maintain $5,000 within your first 90 days. Head to facet.com/Ramit to learn more about which membership option is best for you. Facet is an SEC-registered investment advisor. I'm not a member of Facet and have an incentive to endorse Facet as I have an ongoing fee-based contract for cash compensation based on this endorsement. All opinions are my own and not a guarantee of a similar outcome. Okay, welcome back. How was your conversation?

Enlightening. It begins with us. We don't have to prove our love. We don't have to prove our dedication, our commitment to our children. Because we know that we do that. And we should have and can have control on how we help them.

Mary, what was your realization?

I very much struggle when it comes to my children. I was hurting because I feel like we were making my son look like this selfish, loser, and he's not. I made it so I'm the ATM, not him. He goes out of his way to help us all the time, not— and he works very, very hard. And he's had a ton of personal crises in his life, which I took on. And that's the realization that's on me, that's not on him. And I need to say no. And That doesn't mean we can't help in a different way though. Help him stand on his feet and not enable. Just can't. So.

Why?

Because we need to live and we can't live if we're bailing him out all the time.

So what have you decided?

That we wanna focus on ourselves and have a life and not enable our children. All the time.

Okay, so you want to focus on yourselves. What does it look like?

I think the foundation is, um, numbers, finance. Where are we at in the hole? Can we get out of it? How do we do it? We have to work together financially and supporting each other emotionally with the hard and tough decisions that we have to make regarding, uh, our children.

I agree.

I think that makes us know we're both strong.

Mm-hmm.

And our children know that we are strong together.

Yes. Do they know that you're strong right now?

They see us work together, and we might not come together with money. I get frustrated. I'm controlling. I just want to do it. And so that's something I need to fix. Is have more patience and less control. And that's hard.

Less control. Or maybe another way to put it is sharing control with Harry. Trying to have less control is scary because what does that mean? But a more active phrase would be Harry and I are going to share the numbers together.

Right.

He's going to own some of them. I'm going to own some of them. We may not know exactly what these numbers are, but we're going to learn together. And over time, I am going to work— I, Mary, am going to work actively on becoming more comfortable sharing that control, because that is what has to happen. How's that sound?

That sounds good.

The language is profoundly important. It is, right?

Because I don't want to give up control. Yeah.

And actually, if you started off this entire process by saying, all right, I need to work on giving up control, you've already lost. Like, you coach soccer, right?

Right.

If players come on the field and they're like, we need to win or we are a piece of shit, they've already lost, right? They're not even having fun, right? They're not being a team. So before we ever set foot on the field, the way that we talk and think about the mission in front of us determines if we even have a chance at winning or not. So we're not trying to give up control. We are trying to share control with my partner because we are more effective as a team than either of us are individually. Okay, I'm getting excited. How are you feeling?

Excited and fearful.

Okay, fair. Harry?

Totally up for it.

Great. Okay, we have some big changes to make. If you were 30 years old, we would approach things a little differently. You are not. Time is ticking. I just want to be honest about that.

It's fast.

You got to make huge changes and you have to execute them at a near flawless level if you want to have a good shot. I don't expect perfection from anybody, but the time for trying to do things is over because of your age and because of your financial predicament. There is no time for that. It is, we are going to pick a plan, we are going to execute on it, and anything that gets in the way as an obstacle will be relentlessly pushed back or destroyed. That's it. We don't have time to mess around. In a second, I'm going to put your CSP up on screen. And what we are going to try to do is try to take these numbers, which are at the moment out of control. You're spending, you know, way more than you make. We need to bring that down. And we are going to try to see what we can do about your expenses, your income, all of it. Okay, let's put that CSP up on screen. So we're looking at the net worth section here right off the bat. I want to understand, you have $476,000. What is this in your assets?

That is our home and my car, probably. Yeah.

And under the debt, $435,000 of debt. What's under that?

That is what we owe the mortgage, what Harry owes for the debt consolidation. Like my braces and some random things, medical bills and whatnot.

How much is the mortgage?

What we owe? Yeah, it's $375-ish, right around there.

Moving along, fixed costs are at 139%.

Unacceptable.

This number needs to come down to roughly 60%. How do you want to do it?

You've got on there, what do you got? Utilities, gas, water, electric, internet, cable, right? Subscriptions to how many things?

You have $135 of subscriptions per month.

Yeah, and we cut some of that already. Um, we can cut more, but it's not going to really help us. This is where I get lost and frustrated and overwhelmed. I don't know where to begin.

Typically what happens is when people are in a similar situation, we start looking at the fixed costs, and what they do is they start off with really small numbers, and they'll spend about 15 minutes debating if they can cut $20 off their cell phone bill. I let them do it. And finally they do, and it moves the number maybe 1%. And at that moment I go, what did you realize? And they go, holy shit, we've been spending all of our time on the wrong stuff. But it's a valuable lesson. In your case, you did not even let Harry cut the subscriptions because you tried to skip ahead. So you actually skipped that moment of realization for the two of you. I would have rather you all went back and forth for 20 minutes on the subscriptions and then cut it. But you didn't even allow that to happen.

Why?

Because I know it's not going to help that much to cut the little things out like that.

Is it possible that the things you think you know are maybe not right?

Yes. Okay.

Because if what you knew was accurate, you would not be in this position today. So put your trust in the process.

Okay.

Don't be too smart for your own good. This is a classic problem with smart people. We want to act like everybody else right now. I'm a statistic and I'm going to follow the process. Cool. What do you want to do?

So what constitutes miscellaneous since it already is 15%?

Great question. Miscellaneous is automatically added as 15% of everything above, because people often forget things like their annual car registration or some random thing they had to get fixed for their whatever. And so I automatically bundle that in. Now, for most couples, 15%, if they have no debt, is actually surprisingly accurate. For a couple like you that needs to make massive changes, you cannot afford to have 15%. You need to be dialed in. So I would take that number down, way down. It's currently at $957. Fact is, you can't afford that in just miscellaneous per month. So what number would you like that to be at?

200.

Great, let's do it. I'm going to zero this out. I'm going to make this 200. Let's take a look at your numbers. It dropped to 125%.

Insane.

What does that tell you?

We're on the right track.

We dropped $700 or so and went down a few percentage points. So I think this is positive movement. What's next, Harry?

It's minimal, but phone.

Phone is $100.

Yeah, I can drop that straight down to a minimal $80 straight away. $80.

Okay.

That would cut off roaming and Stephen's phone.

Oh, you have your son on your phone plan. Ah, great. This is actually amazing. $80. Honestly, I, I'm glad the $20 of savings, but I'm more interested in the fact that who's going to be the one to have the conversation with your son?

I'm happy to.

Is it— whose son is this? That's your son. I don't think you should have the conversation. I think it should be Mom. Mary. Mary looks visibly uncomfortable right now. She's avoiding eye contact and looking away. Mary, this is the beginning of the rest of your life. Taking your 36-year-old son off of your family plan is probably the easiest thing you're going to have to do right now.

Yes.

Can you text him right now?

Yes. Okay.

Do you have your phone with you?

No.

We can bring it for you. As we're grabbing your phone, I want you to think about what you're going to say to him.

Well, he knows we're here and he knows why we're here, so I'm going to say, We have to make some drastic changes. We're going to give you a month more on the phone so you can get money coming in from your new job, and then you have to get your own plan.

I love that. Here's your phone. If I can make one suggestion, I love what you said about we have to make some drastic changes. We've made a decision.

Okay.

And then type what you said. I want you to own that power. This isn't happening to you. I'm not forcing you to do it. The two of you have made a decision. Is that accurate?

Yes.

Okay, go ahead, take your time. And before you click send, just tell me. Okay, Mary, read me what you got so far.

We made a decision. We are making drastic changes with finances, and we will keep you on the phone plan for another month.

After that, comma.

Okay.

We will not—

we will not— I want to say be able to pay for you anymore, but we will not pay for you. Okay. That's so— it sounds so bitchy.

Look at me, look at me. Do I care if anyone calls me a little bitch?

That's funny.

Call me a bitch, America, like I care. I'm trying to teach your son how to be self-sustaining and you how to live a rich life. If somebody thinks that you're bitchy, so be it.

Okay, okay.

What do you got? A lot of typing over here.

I'm just fixing a typo.

Read it.

Uh, I said, after that, we will not pay the phone for the phone.

We love you. I like the incongruity. We will not pay for the phone. We love you. Send.

Well done.

Thank you.

Did you send it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Take a second. Hold on. Well, everybody look at each other. This is quite a moment. This is Mary and Harry 2.0. That may be the most difficult text that you have written, but you did it.

You did.

I'm gonna cry now.

No, you, you should cry tears of joy.

What's going through your head, Mary? It's okay.

It's— he's just going through a lot, and I don't want to make it worse. He's trying not to lose his daughter, and he's trying to get his life together and not lose his house and his property. And he works really hard, and it's just hard. I don't like to see him struggle. And helping him with a phone just seems like such a little thing. One less thing he has to worry about.

When you brush your teeth in the morning, do you worry about brushing?

What? Since I've had braces, I do.

Okay, you got me on that one. When you put your glasses on in the morning, do you worry about putting them on?

No.

No. What do you do?

I just put them on.

Just do them. You're capable, right? You're an adult. He hasn't had to build that skill because there's a lot going on. I'm not going to take away from that. Obviously, there's a lot going on with him. But also, you have stepped in. It's almost like you've treated him like he's frail.

Yeah.

Like he's weak.

Yeah.

And when somebody treats you like you're weak your whole life, what happens to you?

You're weak.

You're weak.

But he's not.

He's not weak. He's strong. Look, treat me like I'm strong. I might fall down a couple of times, but then I'm gonna get back up and I'm going to become strong. That's the mindset that you've got to use. I think you did something really miraculous. I want you to stand strong. When you change the relationship with somebody, it is very uncomfortable, and they will consciously and unconsciously do a lot of things to bring you back in line. That's where the two of you come in helpful. You're a team. You're a unit. Okay?

Okay.

Great job. Let's keep moving. We shaved off $20 from the cell phone, but honestly, to me, that was worth a million bucks. That was incredible. Let's keep going. We got to get this number down to roughly 60%. We're at 124%. And frankly, we need to move a lot faster. What's next?

So I think we could do a lot better on the groceries. Great.

Groceries are $900.

Yeah.

How much?

We way overspend.

Who does the groceries?

We both do.

From now on, one of you is going to do it because one person owns the number. Who's going to do it?

Six.

$600. You're going to do grocery shopping? Yeah. Harry's grocery shopping from now on. Mary, you good with that?

Yes.

Great.

I hate grocery shopping.

Amazing. Harry, you're on it. I'm on it. $600. How often do you grocery shop?

All the time.

I can't do that anymore because every time you go is going to be more. So how many times a month are you going to grocery shop?

Biweekly.

So $300 each time you go.

Yeah.

Can you do it? Yeah.

Amazing. Easy. Easy.

That's what I'm talking about. What's next? Clothes. Who's buying clothes? Zero. No clothes. Is this for the grandchild? No. Then who the hell is buying clothes for $50 a month?

We don't buy clothes for a while, and then we'll go buy some jeans.

I'm sorry.

Or shoes.

Am I living in an alternate universe? You have 119%. You don't buy clothes. That's it. Make it work. Next. This is the kind of energy we need. What's next? Subscriptions at $135. Yeah, right. Uh, pick one.

What do you want to keep?

Netflix.

Great, $20. Everything else is gone. Goodbye. Next, car payments. Probably nothing you can do about that.

That's just gas.

Meds. All right, I'm not trying to— that would be really cruel if I'm over here like, how, how much of this, uh, you know, Tylenol, whatever do you need?

I'm not doing that.

Um, hey, what's this, uh, mortgage at, or, uh, at $34,600.

That's our mortgage with, with insurance. And, um, uh, what else do you pay? Taxes.

Do you realize that you are way overspending on housing?

Yes.

Oh, you do? You just keep doing it? What would you like to do about that? Because if you look, we're at 116% fixed costs, guys. We're trying to get to 60%. There's no amount of changes you can make.

He can make more money.

Oh, that's true. Let's do that before we mess with the mortgage. All right. Going up to Harry. Your income is gross income, $1,500 a month. Not going to cut it.

Nope.

What's it— what job can you get now that will raise that number to at least $5,000 a month?

I have more hours now coming in through the Parks and Rec Sports Department because through the summer and the fall, my hours go up tremendously.

Okay, that's good. What about after fall?

My plan is personal coaching, which I'm building the clientele by skullduggery.

Okay, that is one option, but that doesn't get us where we need to go. So I need another option that gets you $5,000 a month. What about a job? Straight up job. There are times where we have the ability, yes, to do a business right now. If you want to do that extra, great. But we need something stable and predictable.

Yeah, yeah, you can talk to Parks and Rec and see. They just acquired all that land. Maybe they'll be willing to give you a full-time job.

I know there is more work coming through anyway, so they love you.

Yeah, they don't want to lose you.

No.

Can you make it happen?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not just saying that.

No, I'm asking, can you make it happen?

Yeah.

Okay, you can get a job or jobs that total—

I'm happy to do jobs.

Great. I don't care how you do it, right? I need $5,000 a month.

Got it.

All right, I'm putting it in here. $5,000 a month. But look at this fixed cost number. All right, you see what it is right now? It's at 116%.

Shoot it, go for it.

Watch this. I'm gonna approximate your take-home pay. Watch. $3,850 net per month.

Holy shit, that's a kick in the right place, isn't it?

The fixed cost just dropped to 75%.

And we're targeting 60, did you say?

Yeah.

That's on me.

Make it happen.

I'm in.

Boom. That's what we're talking about. Nice work. I love that response.

I've still got time for shopping groceries.

Uh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I don't care when you do it. It could be midnight.

That's free. I'm in.

All right, good. I'm liking this so far. I'm liking it a lot.

That's massive.

Huge.

Mary. Yes.

Good suggestion. I want to take a second and note that you brought up he can earn more. It wasn't about blaming anybody. It was just like, hey, he needs to earn more. This is what I expect from a partner. We modeled the numbers. It's obvious. Holy shit. This changes the game. He goes, I'm in. This is how we have these honest conversations in Mary and Harry 2.0. Boom. Okay, let's keep going. Mary, anything on your income that, like, is it possible for you to make any more, or are you making what you make?

I work in higher education. I'm not going to get much more. Maybe a little bit more.

Okay. Can you do anything on the side?

I don't— yeah, I've tried. Maybe.

Maybe.

Time-wise is—

what time? You have a whole bunch of free time now. No more chaos around you. People texting you, you just send them straight to voicemail and delete. I'll just delete 75% of the texts that come in. Oh, my kid's texting? Delete.

Because we have a baby.

Oh, that's true. Okay, that's true. 5-and-a-half-month baby. That's going to take some time. All right, let's go back down. Listen, your rent, your mortgage.

We need to figure something out.

Well, there's only a couple of suggestions here. Okay, I'm going to tell you right now. Your mortgage is in a better place. With the new income, your mortgage now costs you 24%.

Okay.

That's better.

Okay.

But that is only if the two of you are making that kind of money.

Yeah.

Okay?

Yeah.

If we factor in all the associated costs with your housing, you're probably actually at 31% or so. That's not crazy, except for a couple that is approaching retirement and has not enough money. Okay, so your housing is your biggest driver. You have one option, which is if you were to sell your house, do you know how much you'd walk away with?

Maybe $90,000. Yeah.

After expenses?

Yeah.

Okay. And can I ask you, whether in your current location or anywhere where you would potentially move, how much would it cost you for a smaller place appropriate for the two of you and the grandchild?

It would be about the same, if not a little bit more.

It would be like $3,500 a month?

Uh, it would be probably around $3,000.

Really?

Mhm.

I think you're probably in no position to buy right now. But renting, um, I'm not saying you have to. I'm saying it's worth exploring.

Yes.

If you were to find a place where you could rent, especially if it is maybe a bit out there, a bit cheaper, there's some option, smaller place, because you don't need a huge place. No, I actually think a smaller place would help you. You know why? Not only the cost, but it actually makes it really easy for the two of you to politely decline a lot of requests for help.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm so sorry, we can't do that. We only have one bedroom for the baby.

It's a bit of a squeeze.

Yeah, I like a squeeze.

We already have a squeeze.

I like it.

We only have a 1,300-square-foot house.

Great, try 950.

Yeah, we just need a bedroom and an office. I work from home.

Yeah.

And then a place for knickknack.

We, um, we looked in your location. My team just looked it up. They found a 2-bedroom pet-friendly place for $1,795.

Oh wow.

You want to see what that effect that would have on you?

Yes, please.

Yeah, watch this. $1,795, you're down to 64%. Hey, let's drop your um, utilities. Let's put, uh, $150, a little bit more reasonable. And we'll keep your insurance, even though I think you probably would pay less, but maybe your rent would go up, so over time we'll equal it out. You're down to 59%. That gives you $2,000 a month to be able to split among savings, investments, and even maybe eating out. Once a month.

A life.

Yes.

Uh, it's funny because we flip-flopped, because I was the one pushing him to watch the videos and everything, and he didn't want to think about it. Yeah. And now I'm like, no, I don't want to rent.

You don't want to rent because— it's okay—

because it's a failure.

Mary, I love the honesty. So this is one of the reasons that I love talking about our choice to rent. We have the money. We could buy right now, and we choose to rent. And I talk about it not to brag. I'm not bragging about renting. It's because in America, when we talk about renters, we typically think they are poor and they're failures, and we don't want to do that. I can see it on your face.

I already had that label. Yeah.

And so we will tie ourselves, we'll twist ourselves in a knot to avoid being thought of as poor or failures. But my whole concept of a rich life, I will teach you to be rich, not I will teach you to copy what everybody else does. I will teach you to choose your rich life. If you want to own your place and you want to stay in it, I can help you do that. But if you want to have thousands of dollars more per month to be able to invest, to be able to live, then you may have to reconsider if you care what other people think.

I need to get over it.

The same way you were treating your son like he was weak, I think you might be treating yourself like you're weak. Look at me when I talk about renting. Look at my body language. You think I say, oh, I'm a poor little renter. Life is so difficult. I hate it. I hate what you think of me, society.

I'm like, think what you want.

I have an awesome life. This is what we chose.

The smart choice for us, right?

And you have to decide what's smart for you, right? Tell me, Mary, what's going on? I love watching, uh, your facial expressions right now.

There's—

I see pain, I see confusion, I see realization. Tell me what's going on.

Again, I just feel like a failure. I worked really so hard to not be the poor person renting with the shit car.

Who says you're a poor person? Who says you're a poor person renting?

Smart person.

I did have a townhome that we sold in a short sale when the market, you know, the whole 2008 crap and went to renting, and then we bought a house, and now it's back to renting.

Yeah. Can I gently challenge you? So the narrative that you just said, I respect it. I know that's what's going through your head. Can you give me a different narrative that's more empowering?

I made decision to sell my townhome because I couldn't afford it anymore. Yes. And renting allowed me to, to live a life with my— the child that I had at the time, my daughter. But then I really worked very hard. I had to claim bankruptcy and everything, and then I worked hard to get past all of that, and it just feels like I'm going back to it.

Stay on the empowering part. You're doing great. Don't tell me about how it feels going back. Tell me why you might be making this decision. What will it get you?

It will get us a life, like Harry said. We'll be able to save money, which we can't do right now.

Yeah.

And we'll be able to go out to eat. We'll be able to explore the beautiful area we live in and go do, maybe do stuff, not spend a ton of money, but just go do stuff.

I just see this over and over with you, Mary, is the narrative that you first come up with is disempowering. It is about the things that are wrong and the ways that you wish you weren't in this situation. But just with a little bit of pushing, you are able to come up with a very empowering narrative. This is an exercise for the two of you to work on. What are the narratives we used to choose, and what are the new narratives that we get to choose? Okay.

All right.

I don't know what you're going to do with your renting versus buying. Personally, though, I really like to see this number at 59%. Uh-huh. So I'm going to leave it in here.

Okay.

You don't have to do it. It's your money. It's your life. But this sure buys you a lot of flexibility. Let me show you a couple of things that we could do with the numbers. Now, I'm going to move quickly on this. Okay. We have $2,100 a month left over.

Why?

Because all that extra money you cut, including the mortgage and all this other stuff, flows to the bottom. We also have $90,000 extra. Okay. $90,000 from the sale of your house.

Uh-huh.

I'm going to make it $80,000 because, I don't know, extra fees and this and that, moving costs, whatever. But I'm going to go ahead and add that to your investments.

Okay.

Okay. So I will put, instead of $500K, it's going to be $580,000.

Okay.

I'm putting it all into investments. Okay. You still have $2,000, $2,139 a month. What are we going to do with that money? Well, we are going to save it and we are going to invest it because time is running out and I need you to have more money.

Yeah.

We good?

Yeah. Yeah.

Let me just show you how I would do it. You all can totally adapt this and change it based on life circumstances.

Okay.

I would get way more aggressive with my savings because right now you are 2 weeks away from disaster. I don't want it. I want $1,000 extra a month going in there. You're now at $1,583 per month. That savings account is not to be tapped anymore. That savings account is one direction. Money goes in, it does not come out. Okay. What else? FSA healthcare?

Yeah, the flexible spending account. I didn't know where to put that.

You put $150 into it?

And now $200.

Yeah.

You spend it, right?

Yeah, yeah. I have to spend it all. Every year.

What do you end up spending it on?

Braces and—

Oh, okay.

Copays and whatever.

Okay, great. So you use it?

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

I don't mind this. I do need some more investments here. Let me look. $417,000, $580,000. We're going to calculate how much you have. Let me take a look at what this shows us. But as I'm going to just quickly summarize this, you're at 59% fixed costs. I would like it to be lower, but I don't mind it. I think some of these things may naturally get a little bit lower. You did mention pets. Can I just ask, are you all going to get more pets?

No.

Okay, good. The answer is no. That was rhetorical. No more pets.

No.

I love your dogs. Goodbye. We're taking a CSP off screen. I'm going to tell you some of our numbers that you may end up with.

Okay.

Okay.

The exciting, the reveal.

So right now, if we hadn't changed anything and we waited until Mary was 65 years old, okay, you'd have about $1 million invested. If you were to withdraw 4% of that, which you could safely, roughly safely withdraw for the rest of your lives, that would be about $40,000 per year in income. It's not a lot. $40K, not a lot. You wouldn't be able to make it. But we want to add on Harry's pension, about $32,000 per year. We want to add roughly $30K of Social Security. So you'd have about $102,000 per year. Thoughts?

That's more than I thought we would have.

Yeah.

So if we don't have a mortgage, that's not bad.

Nicely put. If we don't have a mortgage. And if we keep the rest of our costs pretty low. Importantly, if you retire, you may not need to keep investing. So that would be hundreds of dollars extra per month that you could use. You could save it for a vacation. You know, there obviously you need to pay off some of these debts. You could accelerate those payments. There's a lot of things you could do. Not bad. Not great, but not horrible if you cut your fixed costs dramatically.

Okay. Yeah.

But what about if you sell the house? If you sold the house, $1.1 million, if we add in all Social Security, pension, all that stuff, it would be about $108,000 of income. What do you notice? From $102,000 to $108,000.

Not much.

It's not much of a difference, right?

Yeah.

Do you know why?

Because the, the time of the investment, it's not enough time to grow.

Exactly. It's short. Now, if we stretch that number out, if for example you didn't retire at 65, but a couple of— 2, 3, 4, 5 years later, those numbers change. Considerably. What is the age that you would be minimally acceptable to retire at?

Um, I've had 65 in my head for so long. I'm coming to terms with 67. Okay. Yeah, I don't want to wait till I'm 70.

Okay, you want to look at 67?

Yeah.

So at 67, rather than having 1.1 $1 million, you would have about $1.3 million. So what you will notice is that those 2 years is adding $100,000 per year. Again, I'm approximating this. With shorter time periods, it can become a little dicey, but, you know, I'm giving you some approximate reasonable numbers. At that point, you would have $116,000. $116,000 per year of safe withdrawal income. So we went from $102,000 to $108,000 to $116,000 per year.

That's more than we're making now.

Yeah.

So to me, that's, yeah, that's better.

It's more than you make now, but right now you are spending way more than you make.

Yes. Yes.

What is the key here?

Not to overspend.

Yes.

Our fixed costs down.

Yes.

And underneath that, what is the key to making sure your fixed costs are lower?

Not giving money to people.

Bingo. You are nailing it. Honestly, I could see the confidence just in the way you're responding to me. It's quite striking. I love this momentum I'm seeing. Yes. The way to keep your costs lower, obviously you made some structural changes, you make some decisions together as a unit, but ultimately it is also about having these boundaries. These boundaries are the things that allow you to retire. It's not just about saying no to your kids. It's actually about saying yes to your life. Do you see that?

I do.

Yes. Harry.

And to work alongside that and support for both of us is increase my income.

Yes.

Just do it.

Yes.

That. So nothing else.

At $5,000 a month, it's okay. At $6,000, at $7,000 a month, you are putting yourself in a much better position. The things that I have not outlined here, because I want to be realistic with you, I haven't really outlined vacation because right now it's not feasible. There's no money for it. In order for that to happen, you could, but your earnings would need to go up.

Yep.

To me, I actually love that. In our own household, there are things we want to do, and so we talk about them openly. Here's what I want to do. Here's a hotel I want to go to, whatever. And okay, so what's it going to take? Well, we got to earn this much. We back out the math. If you decided you wanted to take a trip or you wanted to do XYZ, you both talk about it, you get excited about it, use the scripts in the book, and then you map out how much it's going to cost. Okay, so what's it going to take? Does one of us have to work on the weekend? Do we have to do this? Can we eliminate that? And then we bank the money in a named account. And when the time is right, we know the exact month and year we're going to have enough. We take the trip guilt-free.

Right.

What do you think?

Yeah, we need to plan it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This the radical change you're about to make. It's literally changing your identities. Like I said, I joke around Harry and Mary 2.0, but it is everything. The way you talk, the way you relate to each other, to your family, all of it. Having a structured place to talk about this and maybe a third party to get help— you've seen what happens when somebody outside can help a little bit. Therapists do awesome work. Yes, I would encourage that. Yes. Yeah. Final reframe here. I've loved our reframes. You know what you used to say, what you're saying. You are not cutting your children off.

You are empowering them.

Yeah. Making them stronger. And when you focus on your rich life together, what example are you setting for your kids?

How to live life. How, um, yeah, how to live life. Yeah.

Harry?

Well, we're a team. We're working together. We are empowering you. We don't want you to make the same mistakes.

We've seen it passed down the generations. That ends here. Yeah, we care for you. That ends here.

Yeah.

And it might feel uncomfortable, but that's okay. We don't shy away from it. We feel uncomfortable right now and we're still doing it. And you can watch us or not. That's up to you. But you're adults and we're going to trust you to learn the right decisions for yourself. It's going to take a lot. You're going to have to repeat this over and over and over again. That's okay. But it will be important for you to speak it, to say it, to text it, all of the above, because 30, 40 years of the same type of relationship, takes a while to sink in that things are changing. Okay. Did you happen to get a response?

Yes.

Okay. Can you read it out loud?

LOL. Okay.

Wow. What do you make of that?

I'm not surprised.

That's him.

And I just worry and mother hen too much.

All of that.

Yes.

All of that worry. And his response?

LOL.

Yeah, it's actually really cool. I couldn't actually ask for a better response from your son. He goes, cool. Yeah, sounds good.

Yeah.

What surprised you the most in today's conversation?

This has been such a hard issue for us, and how supportive and open he was to listening and taking accountability on that. It's been really hard to make ends meet.

What about for you? What surprised you about yourself?

About me? That I texted my son. I didn't want to.

And you did it.

And I did it. And I feel okay. I feel relieved. Yeah.

Well done.

Yeah. And that we have the fortitude to be able to do this. Yeah. Good for you.

I'm proud of you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Harry, what about you?

In terms of being surprised, you didn't surprise me by texting Stephen because I knew you could. The biggest thing that we have now is the ability and the willpower to continue. Because of this, we couldn't have done that on the couch at home. Or walking the dogs.

And I want you to remember that because it's easy to make changes here. When you go back, it's gonna be very easy to go back into your lifestyle. Families driving up the driveway, people texting. This is actually one of the reasons that I strongly encourage you to move. Financially, yes, but just to change an environment. You know, for example, people who are in recovery, they will often move because they have an environment.

Yes.

That does not facilitate the new person they need to become. Well, guess what? We have a similar scenario here. You are enmeshed in a lot of unhealthy financial behaviors. And even moving 10 miles away could radically change that.

Yes.

I'm very proud of both of you. I am. This is a tough scenario you're in. It really is. I wanted you to understand the severity of it, because if you do nothing, you will end up in a really bad position. It seems okay right now. The roof is here and blah, blah, blah. But it is a very dark place you are heading towards. However, to watch the two of you realize what was going on, to commit to making changes, then we actually went through the numbers and it is possible, but everybody has to be executing. Okay. People respond to a big, bold mission. You two do. The kids do. Everybody does. I think Mary and Harry have a pretty tough road ahead of them. They have family dynamics that are tightly enmeshed. They have a pretty serious financial problem. They are older. There's a lot of things against them, but I'm surprised to find myself confident in them. The way that they changed today was very impressive. Frankly, I did not expect it. And the ability for Mary to even send that text message, that was not just a text message. It was a total transformation of the way she views herself. And I could not have scripted a better response from her son. LOL. Fine. This is amazing. All the stuff that was in her head may not actually be reality-based. So I hope that they are able to make some big decisions. Cut those fixed costs. I think renting might be a very good option for them. Allow them to bank tons of money every single month. Most importantly, I hope they can really come together as a unit as opposed to working independently. I want to give a big shout out to Mary and Harry. Thank you for coming here. I know that wasn't easy. I know that we talked about some really intimate, serious things, and I appreciate you coming here and sharing your story with everybody. And now let's check out their follow-ups.

Hey, this is Harry. Hello everyone, how you doing? Hope all is well. The takeaways I got from that podcast was teamwork between Mary and myself. Has to be teamwork. The accounts, management of the finances, it's vital for our success. And the current changes right now is I have taken over the grocery account, so looking forward to dropping the expenditure on that. And at the same time, on the work front, I have enhanced my coaching programs with gaining more facilities and clients with immediate effect.

Hi, Ramit Sethi. Biggest surprise of our time together is the generational aspect of my relationship and habits with money and how that I most likely pass that on to my own children. Biggest takeaway is I just need to change how I speak about money and finances and not be so negative. So just, for instance, saying things like, instead of relinquishing control of finances to Harold, that we have control together, and together we have control on planning our financial future. Also, I'm just empowering myself and my adult children into having rich lives. We are sitting down tomorrow to work on our conscious spending plan together instead of me doing it by myself and saying, "Here you go, Harold." And discovering our rich lives, exploring that, and understanding what our rich lives look like, and then what we can ruthlessly slash, and then also, put a little money aside to enjoy what is important to us. We are super excited to move forward on our journey.

Everyone, hope everybody is well. Harry, Mary, Boonga!

Hi everyone. Yeah, this is about take 500. We're doing really well. We are being very intentional intentional about spending money and thoroughly thinking things through before we buy anything for the house or anything else. Harry has been in charge of groceries, and he is quite the dictator, so we've had a few heated words about his, um, the way he proceeds with being in charge of groceries.

Groceries, uh, uh, the initial onset when we all met up and fantastic, uh, 900 bucks a month month. June got that down to 720 and a bit of change. Uh, July, we are probably a week to 10 days to the end of the month, and I've got it down to 450.

Brilliant.

On the work front, I've got more hours in with the Parks and Recreation Department here in, well, the sports sector of that. My coaching, um, uh, business, I have more clients coming in, so I've generated more revenue to put into the house hold account for Mary and us. Me, Harry.

Yeah, both of us.

Both of us.

We're a team, not just, not just me. I know I'm the boss, but get on with it, you're rambling. As far as moving, uh, selling our home, we're not going to do that right now. Something to definitely consider in the future, probably just downsizing, buying, um, getting a smaller mortgage, moving out of town a little bit. But right now we need to be in town and I need my dedicated office space and we have our grandson. So not a good time to think about moving at the moment, but we're going to focus on bringing in more money and we have no credit card debt. The only debt we have is our mortgage and the debt that Harry is working on. And the other big issue that we had to work on or are working on is giving money to our adult children.

Your adult children.

Our adult children. It's not just my child, but you know, we'll work through that too. But the one particular adult child has been paying us back slowly. And do you want to add anything?

I just think we're going to sit down over the next week, maybe two, and figure out a repayment plan that is conducive for everyone, which I think we'll sit down as 3 adults and figure that one out. Brilliant.

And we are going through the Money for Couples book, and I really like the first exercise, the first couple of exercises. And when Harry told me what he would buy for me if if there was anything he could buy for me, he said a horse. He said a horse. It was all emotional. It was very emotional. That was so sweet. This is why I love Harry. And I'm going to buy him a Mini Cooper. So one day, one day we'll get there.

There we go. All for now.

That's it.

Yeah. All for now. Signing off. She rambles, you see.

Thanks so much for all your help. You really helped get us on the right path and we are moving ahead.

À voilà!

Cheers.

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