29. “I never know when spending money on something will be an issue with him”

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When it comes to money, I like to save and have a plan for the future which doesn't include a lot of debt. That's just not how I operate.

Becca actually said if we don't get this fixed, this could have some long term repercussions and that's scary to hear. Probably been together over half of our lives and to hear that for the first time shook me to my core a little bit.

That's what started our our 1 1/2 2 hour conversation is I was like I want to live. I'm tired of not living. I want to go and do things and I think we could go and do things, but I also want to enjoy them while I'm doing them. I don't want to Should I order a glass of champagne or am I going to regret that later because he's going to ask me why I ordered a glass of champagne.

Auto loan 35,000 what kind of car do you have? Please don't tell me it's a Ford truck.

It is a truck, but it's not Ford.

Faith knew it. How much did this truck cost?

50,000.

$50,000.

You cannot afford a $50,000 car when you make $115,000.

I got some great feedback from you that you wanted to hear. More couples on my podcast with different incomes and different net worths, not just millionaires who aren't sure how to spend their money. And we listened. Today I'm talking to Brad and Becca. They've been married for eight years and they have three children. Brad and Becca are in debt. They have a $290,000 mortgage, a $35,000 car loan, a $25,000 RV loan, and around 10,000 bucks in credit card debt. Brad is the primary earner and Becca works part time. Together they make $105,000. But Brad feels overwhelmed with their financial situation. His wife, Becca has noticed how Brad behaves around money. He'll feel anxiety one day and the next day he'll convince himself it's all fine and he'll go out and make a major purchase, often putting it on credit cards. In today's episode, you're going to hear me speak to someone who can't afford his lifestyle. And this is a different type of conversation than you normally hear from me, but I believe it's important. I'm Ramit Sethi, and this is I Will Teach youh to Be Rich.

Rebecca and I had a discussion, actually just standing up in the kitchen for probably hour and a half, two hours about my feelings around money and how it affects our relationship. It usually comes up every few months. Typically it's the same discussion ends the same way where I'm going to try to work on my feelings around money. But this was the first time where Becca actually said if we don't get this fixed, this could have some long term repercussions. And that's scary to hear. We have a long relationship. We've been married for almost eight years. We dated a long time before that, so probably been together over half of our lives. And to hear that for the first time shook me to my core a little bit. So we've always talked about it, but it's probably been the last in the last couple of years where we've noticed my emotions around money and how it affects Becca and how it can spill into other areas of my life.

What do you think changed two years ago for you to start really talking about money more seriously, more negatively having kids?

We have three kids and they're all young and once they got older to where we could start doing things with them. I started looking at things that I wanted to do that we wanted to do with the kids travel in particular, take them places. Disney World, Grand Canyon, Europe. And that's when I started trying to really address what we need to do to get to that point. And I think that's when I started seeing more how I struggle with money, emotionally, mentally, that type of thing.

I won't say that he mismanages, but he manages, manages, manages. And he feels good, Feels good. He feels good. And then he panics and he goes off the rails, and he's constantly, we don't have it for that. We can't do that. We can't do this. But then a couple days later, it's like he's back on the horse again, and he's ready to just live life. And so it's a roller coaster, which is a little bit hard to keep up with. You never know when you're spending money and it's going to become an issue.

And I just need help dealing with the internal feelings that I have because I know that it does bleed over. If I have a day where I'm stressed about money, no matter how hard I try, there's just something about my aura or the demeanor and when I walk into the door that's, oh, he's probably worried about money. And it just. It's not good. And I hate that. I like to leave work at the door, and I wish I could leave this at the door to enjoy the limited time that I do have with our kids.

He just goes really fast, far into the we can't, we don't, and the negative side of it. But then he's like, I want to get a new tv, and then we end up with a new television. But last month we didn't have the money for that new television, so where did it come from? And it's just. He's reframed it for himself.

And what is the effect of this on you?

Oftentimes I find myself making decisions on how I spend money based off of his emotion, as opposed to do I really want it or do I really want to do it? It's how is Brad going to respond? And then I end up not doing it or not buying it.

Okay, Brad, what do you think about Becca's characterization? Is that true?

Yeah, absolutely. I know for a fact that how I feel around money and how it can affect me absolutely prevents Becca from doing the things that she wants to do, living her rich life.

I understand that you wanted to buy a shed. First of all, what is a shed? I have to ask. Listen, I lived in a high rise in Manhattan. I Just want to make sure I know what we're even talking about here. A shed, like where you put your tools in the backyard is that we're talking about?

Yep. Tools. Toys.

You put toys in a shed?

Yes.

How many toys do you have?

Well, we have three kids, and even with the shed, probably half of the garage, because we have a garage, is filled with toys.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Okay, we're going to get back to.

The shed and I know I'm going to hear from about 100,000 people who live in places where people have sheds making fun of me for not knowing what a shed is. I accept your criticism. You have so many toys for three young kids that it takes up half your garage and part of the shed. Did I hear that right?

You did, yes.

Yeah, but I'm sure it sounds worse than it is. I mean, you're talking like a power wheels, like the little.

The little.

The cars that little kids can drive. They're four and six.

Okay, listen, if you're going to write me to make fun of me for not knowing exactly what a shed is, screw it, I deserve it. But more importantly, what I was trying to do there was to get a sense for why he wants a shed. I have a hunch from talking to lots of people who struggle with money. A lot of people who overspend also have a huge amount of stuff. You walk into their house and they have candles, they have piles of paper, they have three video game systems. It's just stuff everywhere. You rarely see that in households with much higher incomes. I was trying to find out if my suspicion was correct based on their answers. Though I can't say if my guess was right or wrong. But I'm making a mental note and I'm going to keep looking for clues.

So you've got your garage, you got your car, you decided you wanted a shed. And what was the conversation like? Did you say, we're going to Home Depot, we're going to buy one, or we're going to build one? Like, how did this conversation start?

So we had been having the conversation for years about we need a shed, we need a shed. And then two years ago we decided to just go ahead and do it. But we waited for a Lowe's promotional period. We have a Lowe's card from years ago. And so we bought the lumber and everything we need to build the shed. I like to build things. My dad built things. So we stick built it. We didn't buy a pre made one because they're cheap.

How much does this cost? How much does this lumber cost?

So when everything's said and done, we'll be in it for 2,500. So we didn't save up for it, we financed it like we discussed. And so I have. Ever since I can remember having a job, I've always had a credit card. The last time I can remember ever saving for anything was when I was a kid and my parents told me if I wanted a tv, I needed to save for it. But once I was introduced to credit cards and found out I could get something now immediately and pay it off over time, that's been my go to. But then when we have credit card debt that we already have to pay for, throw this on top where, yeah, you can pay $30 a month, but at the end of the promotional period, you've got to make some larger payments or you're going to be paying the interest and then throw other promotional cards on top of that. Suddenly you're having to make significant credit card payments every month just so you pay it off in time. And that's where my anxiety kicks in, is that we can barely afford to buy the groceries that we need, put gas in the car, because we've got these credit card bills that we need to pay.

Ding, ding, ding.

This is the second clue that tells you Brad is unsophisticated with money. The clue is Brad telling us that he puts purchases on his credit card instead of paying them in full. He even mentions using a 0% promotional period. This is a classic tell for people who are unsophisticated with money now. Yeah, some people are very sophisticated. They can pay it all off and they intentionally take the 0% promotional period for 12 months and then they pay it off. Why? Because they can make more money in.

The market, blah, blah, blah.

But that's not how it's typically used. Typically, it's unsophisticated people who cannot afford what they're buying. And so they take these promotional periods and they think they're beating the system, but really they're just gambling that they can figure out a way to pay off their credit card before the interest kicks in. It's a gimmick and they fell for it.

Real question for you.

Do you know how often you're supposed to see your primary care physician? How about the dentist? How about a dermatologist? A lot of us just wait to get a text from the dental hygienist to know it's time to make an appointment. But your health is important and we talk about going from defense to offense. With your money?

What about with your health?

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You want something and then you don't get it for a long time. You think about it, ruminate about it, finally get it and then you start to feel bad afterwards.

I think so yeah. When I first got a job after college, I couldn't decide on a floor mat for inside the door cause I just was overwhelmed. Didn't want to make the wrong decision.

So you're at the store, you're looking at the floor mat aisle at Target or wherever you see, like, 30 different floor mats. What goes through your head at that moment?

I just couldn't make a decision. And I think, as silly as it seems, I was worried I'd make the wrong decision. It wasn't 30. It was two. It was, do you like this one or this one?

Why were you worried about making the wrong decision? What does wrong mean to you?

That I didn't choose the optimum. I didn't pick the best.

If you had made a better decision, that would have meant what?

That I didn't make a mistake.

And what kind of person makes a mistake unintelligent?

Now, when I say Brad is unsophisticated with money, I'm not judging him. I'm being descriptive, not prescriptive. Brad isn't sophisticated with money. That's fine. We all start somewhere. I'm not sophisticated with cooking French food. Okay, no judgment. It just is what it is. But what's strange is that until recently, Becca had been handling their finances. In fact, later in our conversation, it turns out that she works part time as a bookkeeper. In other words, she is sophisticated with money. And she was doing a pretty good job. But at a certain point, she handed that job over to Brad. And then things got worse.

I'm confused, Becca, because you were doing this, you understood it, you were handling it, and then you handed over the budget to him. How come?

Because of the emotional. He. It was causing arguments by him not being as involved, which the better thing, hindsight, is just get him involved and show him. But it just was leading to arguments. Every time we talked about money, it was leading to argument. So I said, fine, then you do the budget and you'll see that it's going okay. He didn't understand. His brain works different.

Okay, so your response was like, I'm tired of fighting. You do it. You basically shove it over to him. And let me guess, you didn't get the reaction you thought. You didn't get the outcome you wanted.

No, I did not. He didn't really take it. He just.

What a surprise.

Yeah.

He still used that checking account as the gauge of our success. And I'm like, but look, tomorrow something came out early. It's okay. That's why we have a buffer in the checking account. That's why we have savings and investments and things like that.

Yeah.

Again, this stuff is not that complicated. But there has to be a foundation and just shoving a spreadsheet at someone. It doesn't work, as you learn.

So by him checking all the time in the wrong place, I was like, I don't know what to tell you. The money's coming. It's there. It's not in the checking account right now. Because that's not how I set it up. That a checking account isn't a savings account. So money goes from there. It's not meant to have thousands and thousands of dollars in it. It's meant to have what you're paying for.

I get it.

And then.

So when he was using that as his gauge, I'm like, I can't. I don't know what to tell you.

I get it. It's driving me insane to even imagine these conversations. If it were me, I have all these flows and stuff. And if somebody was pinging me every four days saying, like, why isn't this here?

I'm like, do you understand how sophisticated my flows are? Look at the model that I built. It's all there.

Of course, that's not very productive. I get it.

So.

So, Brad, do you understand the concept, like, if. Well, you have kids? So let's say that, you know, your baby isn't crawling at six months. Exactly. And I came up to you and I go, when's she going to crawl?

When's she going to crawl?

It's six months. It's six months in one day. How do you think you would feel if I did that every four days?

It'd get annoying. We've experienced that, actually. Um, we have a niece who's very close in age by only a few days off from one of our kids, and we were always getting that comparison.

Yeah, it's annoying, and it makes you defensive. And also, what does it matter if it's six months in one day or seven months? Eventually, baby's gonna crawl. So, Brad, you got this spreadsheet from Becca, and let me take a wild guess at how many times you opened that spreadsheet after she sent it to you. Is the number zero.

He created his he. Without looking at the one that I sent. He created his own.

Okay. Okay, that's interesting. And Brad, how come you did that? What was your thinking behind that?

In case I would think of something that she didn't. You know, ultimately I compared the two, but I thought that I was more likely to think of something if I had nothing to go off. If I look at one that's been put together, I felt that there was a better chance that I would overlook something that maybe Becca overlooked too.

Like you can't trust somebody to mow your lawn, and you can't trust your wife to build the spreadsheet. Any similarities?

It sounds like there is, but I trust my wife more than anybody in the world.

I know you trust her. Obviously you trust her. You know, she's your wife and she's mom of the children, but did you see what her face looked like when you were talking about how you built your own model?

No, I didn't.

Okay, Becca, you want to tell them?

It was a look of. I'm sure you did build your own model.

You.

Kind of undermines. It's a little bit. It's undermining, and it doesn't make you feel good that. Okay, well, I. I've been using this for months to keep a gauge on our finances, and then you can't even look at it, and you got to build your own. So it just makes you feel like you don't trust me.

What do you see, Brad?

I see probably other areas that I. I may do that, where she may have a way of doing things, and rather than implement her way, I just do it on my own. Start from scratch.

And what percentage of the way do you get when you implement it on your own?

80%, maybe.

Anybody else in your life that got 80% of the way there?

My dad.

And then it becomes one more item on your to do list. How many credit cards do you have?

Probably around 10.

That's yet another clue of how Brad and Becca, like so many of us, are not particularly sophisticated with money. Brad doesn't review his spending regularly. Together, they have a ton of credit cards. In fact, I. I bet I know what kind of cards they have.

There's not that many with balances on there. But he's also including store cards.

Yeah. Never get a store card. Remember what I said in my book, don't ever get a store card. Let me guess. What do you have a Gap or an Old Navy card as well. Which one?

Oh, that was me. But we haven't used that.

I knew it.

Yeah.

Everybody who has bad financial situations has.

A Gap or an Old Navy card.

What else?

Just tell me right now.

Hold on, hold on.

I was going to guess. You have a gas credit card.

No, I don't.

No.

Okay, I stand corrected. And Amazon.

We do have an Amazon card.

Okay. That one's okay.

But it's paid off monthly. It's paid off monthly. It's just revolving.

What else?

What's the one you don't want to tell me about?

Best Buy.

Oh, my God. What did you say you saved $13 on some purchase like 10 years ago?

Well, I used to work there.

That doesn't mean you have to get their credit card. But okay. What else do you have?

Lowe's.

Yeah.

And then we have. I've had an American Express. That was the first credit card I've ever had. And I still have that. It's a Hilton card. I used to travel a lot for work and I was able to charge to that and earn the points.

How many points you still have now?

We still have about. We just use them. I think we have about 150,000, but it was up to a million at one point.

Yeah, well, that Hilton card is going bye bye as well. All right, so you have a bunch of cards that you don't need to have. A lot of these cards aren't even that good of cards. So we're gonna. We're gonna ax those real quick. But what else do we need to do? Because you're papering over the real issues here.

Yeah.

We'll get the credit card debt taken care of. You'll close these horrible cards. But what's going to happen two months from now when we're not talking and you're sitting there saying, oh, my God, I need to repair the fence and you know it's going to cost me six grand and on and on and on? What do you think is going to happen?

Put it on a card again.

Yeah. And why? It's not just the fact that you have credit cards. You're going to have credit cards.

What is it?

I get it now. Yeah. I don't have to wait for it.

Immediate gratification.

What is the benefit of waiting for something to pay for it in full when you can get it now and pay the same amount in the end? Now I know the answer. What is it? Not having the anxiety. If we save up the cash and we paid for the shed in cash, I wouldn't have that guilt or the anxiety around paying it off years later.

But. Is there a but here?

I don't think there's a but there.

Then why didn't you do it?

Because we didn't have the money.

That's why you save up for it.

We weren't saving. Yes.

Bingo.

I think that feel like that I was held to a pretty high standard. I'm the oldest and I didn't want to disappoint anyone.

How many kids in your family?

I'm one of three.

Okay, so when you say held to a higher standard. Tell me about that.

I think that and it was probably just something that I projected that just because I was the oldest and had the most years compared to my siblings, that I was just expected to be better. I don't think that was intentional. My parents were great parents, so it's not something that they did. But I just felt like that if I screwed up, it was a big deal. Both of my brothers got their first TV given to them, didn't have to work for it. That was one of the first things, probably the last thing that I think I ever saved up for because it was if you want this, you need to save up for it.

The uncomfortable truth is that for millions and millions of people, they simply do not plan for anything financial whatsoever. They simply don't save. If they see something they want, they buy it and then they deal with it later. And you'll see this impulsivity in other parts of their lives as well. If they invest, which many of them don't, they'll impulsively buy hot stocks and then the instant it goes down, they'll sell it. I also have not been able to correlate this to other parts of their lives. Some people are excellent parents, which obviously requires lots of long term thinking. Some of them have really healthy lifestyles, which requires long term thinking. But with money, for whatever reason, they're impulsive and short term oriented. By contrast, I really love speaking to people with a long term focus on their finances. They have a healthy savings account, they know what they're saving and what they're investing for. Some of them even have a 40 year time horizon which allows them to accumulate serious wealth. If I ask them, would you ever buy something if you didn't have the money in the bank to pay for it? They just look at me blankly. It's a totally different perspective on short term versus long term thinking.

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

There's a lot more to unpack here.

And I think Becca has helped me see that kind of continues that I'm held to a different standard. How so that I shouldn't make mistakes. I have a really hard time asking.

For help and can you connect that with your upbringing at all?

My dad, he did a lot of things around the house on his own and he'd let us help out. I see that in myself. If we have stuff that we want done around the house, I'll say that I don't want to pay for it because I can do it for myself. Part of that is I have a hard time trusting people to do something well, even something as simple as cutting the grass, but then especially the projects we have around that Becca's wanted is a deck so she can go out back and sit with our kids and watch them play. And that's something that I'm hell bent on doing myself because I don't want to pay someone else to do it.

What if your dad had said, I want to put a shed in the back, and you said to him, why don't we just hire somebody to do it for us? What would your dad have said?

I think he would have said, I can do it myself, maybe that we couldn't afford it.

Is that true? Could you have afforded something like that.

For me or for my parents?

For your parents?

I don't know. Something that Becca and I have talked about is that I have no idea where my parents stood financially. We went to dinner with them a couple of years ago, and my parents offered to pay and we got the check. And my dad, you'd think the way he reacted to the check, that it was a $500 tab and it was $80. I remember them asking us as kids if we wanted to move to a bigger house or if we wanted to stay where we were at. So then they met with an architect. They drew up these fantastic plans. The house is going to be awesome. They were getting a bedroom off the back of the house. We were excited. I can't remember how old I was, but then I remember them saying that building material prices went up over the course of a few months, and now they couldn't afford what they wanted and that this is the best that they could do. I remember my dad installed the insulation so we wouldn't have to pay somebody to do that. He built the cabinets in the kitchen so we wouldn't have to pay somebody to do that. And it's been probably 20 years, maybe 15, 20 years since they started the addition, and it's still not done. Another characteristic that I see is it's 80, 20 thing projects that my dad would work on. He'd get 80% of the way there, and then the last 20%, it would either not get done or it would take a long time to get done.

Yeah, yeah. And it's just one more thing on your massive to do list next to mowing the lawn and going to work and on and on and on.

And we talk about paying people to do those things, but that's kind of get. I feel trapped again because, well, we can't afford to pay somebody to finish this stuff because we have these bills to pay. And now we've got all these things that we want to do the house, but we can't because we don't have the money for it.

I can understand you using the word trapped. It does feel like you're trapped. You've got this project that's 80% of the way done. You want to finish it, but the tools are expensive. You can't hire anybody else. And there's a massive other to do list of other stuff that's important, too. And you mentioned, hey, I'm concerned about having enough to fill up the tank of gas. Brad, what state or general area do you live in?

So we live east coast, close to Virginia Beach. Okay.

I'm just asking because sometimes people pick up the financial values of the people around them. And I'm just curious about some of these decisions. Like, you've been in credit card debt for a long time, and I'm wondering, is that normal for the people in your community or the people around you?

I do feel like it's normalized in your family.

In my family, yes. I know for a fact that my siblings have credit card debt.

This is very interesting.

How do they talk about it?

I don't. Not the same way as me. Doesn't seem to stress them.

They. I mean, I don't ever really hear them talk about it in a negative way. It's just, yep, I have it, and I don't have any way to pay it off. But they don't have the emotional ties. Even if they can't pay it off, there's. There's no stress around that, which I don't think is a good thing either.

Another clue here. In many ways, debt is contagious. If your friends and family have credit card debt, you're more likely to have it, too. That's also for a variety of structural reasons, by the way. It doesn't just mean that credit card debt is like someone's perfume that rubs off on you. But if you're surrounded by people who think credit card debt is normal, people who buy lots of stuff on incomes that can't support it, you might start to think it's normal, too. Now that I've heard the background, I'm going to start giving Brad and Becca some candid feedback.

So this is not surprising. Do you both realize you're a product of your community and your upbringing? I'll just tell you point blank, while it may be statistically normal to have credit card debt in this country, it's not normal. Okay. In my opinion, it's not Acceptable for somebody making $115,000 to have credit card debt.

There's no reason for it.

The fact that multiple people in your family have credit card debt, it's not surprising to me at all. Because in many ways, debt is contagious. The type of people who have debt surround themselves with others who have debt. Not saying debt is always a choice. A lot of times it's just unforeseen circumstances. Healthcare, student loans, et cetera. But the fact that we're talking about credit card debt, not student loan debt, credit card debt is very revealing when.

It comes to money. I like to save and have a plan for the future, which doesn't include a lot of debt. That's just not how I. Just not how I operate.

Brad, what are you prepared to do to change anything?

I would do anything.

Okay, That's a good answer. Let's take a look at your debt. Student loans, $600.

Okay.

Credit cards, 9,500 bucks. So what do we have on there? The Shed. What else?

The Shed. Last year we got a new TV and surround sound. That was something we got. There's probably a Disney World trip on there. It's a few years old, and I can't even remember what all the debt was.

Okay, let's keep going through the debt. You have an RV loan for $25,000. Auto loan, $35,000. What kind of car you have? Please don't tell me it's a Ford truck.

It is a truck, but it's not Ford. Fuck.

I knew it. What kind of truck is it?

It's a Ram. Okay.

And do you do work that involves you using a truck?

No.

No, you don't.

Of course you have to pull the rv, though.

Oh, yeah, exactly. You need to spend a bunch of money on an rv, which then forces you to spend even more money to buy something that can pull that thing.

You're right.

How much did this truck cost, by the way? The total price of the truck.

It was actually a good deal, but. $50,000.

$50,000.

I got 10 for my trade in.

Okay, Another lesson from Ramit here. This is called Ramit's Fables. Tonight, okay? I'm gonna impart some directive wisdom. You cannot afford a $50,000 car when you make $115,000, okay? You cannot. This is crazy to me. How did you decide how much money you could afford to spend on this truck when you bought it? Let me guess. Was it about the monthly payments?

Yeah, ultimately.

God damn it.

I got pretty heated right there, and I have to apologize. To Brad and Becca.

Sorry, guys.

And I appreciate you sticking with me. Let me tell you why I got so mad though. These are some of the biggest reasons that many of you stay stuck in your financial situation. You worry and you agonize over $3 coffees. And then you go out and take loans to buy a $50,000 truck and an expensive trailer, plus the $400 in gas it takes every month. And the worst of it is you bought these things based on the monthly payment. Guys, you have to stop doing this shit. This is how unsophisticated people act with money. First, they buy things based on monthly payments. Never do this. Sophisticated people look at the total cost of ownership. If you buy a $50,000 truck, but your payments are only $350 a month, by the time you factor in all your interest and fees, that stupid truck might cost you 70, maybe $80,000. Oh, but Ramit, maybe it's their rich life. You're just a coastal elite because you don't like trucks. You're coming down and judging other people. No, you can't just point at something you want and then use my concept of a rich life to justify it. You actually have to be able to afford it. If you can't afford it, that's fine. Save your money. Use my earnable program to earn more. Start investing. But you don't get to just wave your hands and and repeat rich life three times and then buy whatever you want. No, I don't care if it's a truck or a beach house or even one of my self development programs. And another thing, let's talk about these fucking trucks. Virtually every person I talk to in financial trouble has a truck. Why is that? When I ask them, they always have these logical reasons. One guy I talked to, he said, well, I needed to get up these steep hills in the winter. I was like, dude, what are you telling me? Grandma can't get up there in her four door Kia? Then they shift to something like, well, I need it for my trailer. No, you don't need a trailer. Finally they just admit, I want a truck. And when I probe even more, why do you want a truck? They want a truck because everyone around them has a truck. It's fucking status. You guys spend all your time on social media mocking Louis Vuitton bags as stupid status items, yet all of you own these trucks. I looked it up. In 48 out of 50 states, a truck or SUV is the most popular purchase. Now I have a lot of compassion for people's spending and money dials and invisible scripts. But I have zero sympathy for people who buy huge trucks or SUVs and and then get on social media to complain to papa government about gas prices. Take control of your life.

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This is what I'm talking about when I say you have to change your entire worldview. Unsophisticated people buy cars for the monthly payment. Unsophisticated people buy things saying, well, I.

Can afford to have it for 12.

Months without paying interest. Unsophisticated people buy things and say, I'm going to put it on credit and.

Then I'll figure it out later.

No more of that.

That's exactly what I do.

Exactly.

I'll figure it out later.

Yeah, you're living the unsophisticated financial life and then it's no surprise that you're stressed out. All the same people who walk in the car dealer get swindled because they don't know any better by paying a month oh, it's only 350amonth. Oh, they just didn't mention to you that it's 72 months of this, including a shit shitload of interest.

I'm getting mad.

Not at you.

I'm getting mad because I hate seeing unsophisticated people taken advantage of. I don't think you should have to be a master of personal finance to not get ripped off.

That makes me angry to hear that you have been taught these things. And I will say it makes me.

A little angry that you haven't taken responsibility for this, but you are now, which I respect.

I just don't see a way out.

Lots of listeners asked me to feature couples in different financial situations, not just multi millionaires, and today you got it. I'm very grateful that Brad and Becca are sharing their story with us. And I think for a lot of listeners, their situation is very relatable. Here's what we've heard so far. Brad is unsophisticated with money, and instead of learning, he alternates between ignoring the problem and obsessing over it. Brad and Becca use all kinds of gimmicks like 0% balance transfers, 10 credit cards and car trade ins. And if they keep going like this, it's pretty predictable where they'll end up just like tens of millions of other Americans. They'll be in debt, treading water, and frustrated at being stuck. And finally, beyond the money, Brad and Becca are playing out parts of their upbringing. Their invisible scripts are highly reflective of what they saw in childhood. In the second part of my conversation, you'll hear us put together a plan for Brad and Becca. You'll hear if they can commit to that plan. And you'll hear about about the particular struggles they face, which I think you'll instantly recognize in your own life. Coming up next week on I Will Teach youh to Be Rich, part two of my conversation with Brad and Becca. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. I'm Ramit Sethi. Please follow the show show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Head over to iwt.com podcast to find our entire back catalog of episodes and links to all the places you can listen.