"He quit his job and cashed out his 401(k) without telling me"

He quit his job. He cashed out his 401(k). I didn't know he quit his job until I got home that day.

I think I just hit a breaking point. I felt trapped, and the only alternative I had was to just leave it.

This seems like not the only option. It seems like the nuclear of nuclear options.

It's hard for me to trust somebody that made those big decisions when I don't even buy a new TV without asking. I feel like I try to do things responsibly, and then I'm frustrated that I don't want to be the only one feeling like I'm doing things responsibly.

We desperately need more in cash as far as savings is concerned.

I feel like that was his credit card debt and not my credit card debt. Oh, so I'm bitter that I have to pay it off.

I'm really nervous. I'm 36, and to think that I'm at this age and barely any retirement to speak of, it's really scary.

Imagine waking up to find out that your partner made a massive financial decision without even asking you. Today I'm speaking with Jamie, who's 45, and Ryan, who's 35. They've been married for 10 years. They have 3 kids, but they haven't been on the same page about money since he shattered the trust in their relationship when he quit his job and cashed out his 401(k) without telling Jamie. Now, from the outside, they live a very nice life in the Midwest. They have a high income. But as you'll soon hear, this breach of trust has rippled throughout their relationship, leaving them frustrated and even contemplating divorce. At times. I'm about to look at their conscious spending plan, which breaks down their income, net worth, and where they spend their money. But first, I wanna hear from you in the comments. Tell me about a time where you weren't sure you could trust your partner about money. What happened? How did it make you feel, and how did you handle it? And please be specific. I wanna know the details, and I read every one of these comments below. Now let's take a look at the numbers. Assets, $695,000. Investments, $670,000. Savings, $13,000. Debt, $345,000. Net worth, just over $1 million. Technically, they are millionaires, but as you'll soon hear, unsurprisingly, they don't feel like it. In today's conversation, we're gonna find out if they can rebuild the financial trust in their relationship. Let's find out. When I help people think about their rich lives, the main thing I often say is get more specific. People say, I wanna travel more. Okay, this is your rich life. Get more specific. Are we talking about a month-long honeymoon to Europe? Are we going to Disneyland for 3 days? Are we going on a trip to Bhutan? Get more specific. When you're on vacation, who are you bringing? Where are you staying? Are you eating anything in particular? These are all examples of things that my students in my money coaching program have done as part of their rich lives. I want to share the specifics of how other people are spending their money in amazing ways and saving and investing so that you can finally get unstuck. In the program, you get access to a monthly money call where I dive into specific different topics like how to build your rich life, how to break down conscious spending plans, and then I answer your questions live. You also get access to the entire library of past calls including how to spend money to create magical travel experiences, how to buy back your time, and how to find an extra $1,000 per month. We have tons of virtual events coming up every month in money coaching, and you can join right now at iwt.com/moneycoaching. That's iwt.com/moneycoaching to instantly become a member right now. Jamie, in your application, you wrote something that really caught my eye. You wrote, we make almost $300,000 a year, yet still run out of money at the end of the month. Neither of us knows where it went. We need help connecting so that our money talks stop ending in arguing, divorce threats, and nothing ever changing. Jamie, is that an accurate representation of why you are here?

Yeah, I think when I submitted the application, we had just gotten into a disagreement about something, and it seems like that happens where we can't get on the same page. He's like, I'll just go my way and you just go your way, and then it'll be easier. And that's awful. I mean, I hate feeling that way. Like, we love each other. Ryan's a great guy. I would never actually want to get a divorce. But in the heat of that moment, you just feel like, what are we doing with ourselves?

How long have these money arguments been going on?

Probably since Ryan left his job 2 years ago to start a new career. Prior to that, we just kind of lived our lives and didn't have to worry about it. And that was a big shift.

Okay. Ryan, when you hear Jamie describe the way that you both talk about money and she says we need help connecting so our money talks stop ending in divorce threats, how do you react to that?

It's upsetting. It's really hard to hear. And that's exactly why I'm here. I left the career that I had been in and done well in for quite a while, and that threw my retirement off track. So I'm really nervous. I'm 36.. And to think that I'm at this age and barely any retirement to speak of, it's really scary. So I'd like to get that back on track and know I have a system in place to hit a goal versus not having anything.

How often would you say that you talk about money now?

Very seldom. The only time we talk about it is when we notice something going on with the account where it's low and then we're stressed.

Would you agree with Jamie that before you left your job, you almost never talked about money?

Oh, absolutely. We could go out to eat whenever we wanted. We just didn't have to worry.

And when you do talk about money now, Jamie, what are those conversations?

I think the conversations happen the most when Ryan will buy something and I feel like we shouldn't have bought that because if we know we owe X, Y, or Z, why are we spending our money on whatever that thing was? And I get it. Like he works hard, he makes money. I shouldn't tell him how to spend his money, but then I get frustrated because then I feel like, well, then if you bought something, then I can't buy something. Because we both can't be spending the money. And then that's how it kind of snowballed years ago into where we owed a lot of money because I finally was like, screw it. I'm just going to buy what I want to. And next thing we knew, you know, it had gotten into more debt than we had intended to get upon.

Let's take an example from the last 3, 4, 6 months. What was a time where you were not on the same page with money?

Buying a pair of shoes recently. Um, I bought 2 pairs, 1 pair to work out in, and then another pair I could wear to work. With the money that we have in the account, probably not a great idea to spend that on a couple pairs of shoes. I felt like it was reasonable. Jamie was just frustrated given that I spent that amount on those shoes.

And I made a comment that Ryan had spent so much money on stuff, and I was like, you just spent like half your paycheck. And in my head I'm thinking, and you put $0 in your retirement account, like how much stuff do you need versus like what we already have? I know that the issue is not really about the shoes. It's not about the stuff. I feel like I try to do things responsibly and then I'm frustrated that I don't want to be the only one feeling like I'm doing things responsibly. And I get worked up about it and then I'm like, this is dumb. You shouldn't get worked up about this. Just let it go. And so I feel like that's how it ends.

Jamie, how often do you find yourself taking the quote leadership role with money in the family?

Probably 95% of the time.

What do you think's behind that?

Probably some frustration. He says that the reason why we spend too much money is because I want to go on vacation too much. And so then it goes, you spend all our money on vacation. And then I say, you spend our money on things we don't need. And then that's how we go back and forth in this dynamic. And that's always what it comes down to. It's always, if we wouldn't have gone on vacation, we would have had the money for this stuff. And if we didn't buy all the stuff, then we'd have the money for the vacation. And then it just spins around in a circle.

You like it?

Oh no, I hate it.

I don't know that I believe you. You do it a lot, both of you. What do you like about that dynamic?

I think that I want what I want and he wants what he wants, and neither one of us are willing to give up either part of that.

Maybe. You're the one who brings up money, right? Yeah. Do you like that role?

No, but somebody has to do it.

Ah, if somebody has to do it, why not Ryan?

Because I don't think that he would.

Do you trust each other with money?

More yes than no, but lack of trust on my end.

What is that, a yes or no?

That's a no.

All right, Jamie.

I did at one point and I think I don't now.

You wrote in your application, Jamie, I have lost trust in Ryan in regards to money because he made major decisions without me. What major decisions?

He quit his job, he cashed out his 401k, and I didn't know he quit his job until I got home that day.

Ryan quit his job without telling you? Yeah. What happened?

Ryan had worked at a bank for almost 10 years, and when COVID hit, he was allowed to come home and work from home. He never loved this job, and I knew that he did not love this job, but when he got to work from home, it was pretty convenient to be able to not have to drive an hour and a half every day back and forth to work. So his commute was gone. He heard that the threat was coming back, that he was going to have to go back into the office. And he ruminated on that and realized like, I don't want to go back to doing that and quit. Because he had talked about quitting his job many times, but never had actually made the jump to not do it anymore.

And what did you feel at the moment where he told you that? I have quit my job.

Panic. Knowing what I know about how we live and our lifestyle and our 3 kids and all the things we do. He was making really good money. And so it was like a third of our salary probably was just gone.

Wow. Ryan, would you agree with the way Jamie described it? You suspected the call to come back to the office was going to happen. You were not trying to do the commute, and so you just said nope.

Absolutely. I had had conversations with Jamie prior to that saying if they ever did the call back to the office and it was required, it just wasn't something I was interested in.

Okay. What's this about the 401(k)?

So the 401(k) that I had through this company was cashed out when I quit, because I think in the back of my head, I knew some of the expenses we had with the family and that this would help cover for some of those. And when I say cover, really what it did was paid off some of the debt that we had. So I had credit card debt that it paid off. And to me at that time, it just seemed worth that risk, taking it out to try to cover that debt and just buffer however long this period of unemployment would be.

You both are married with 3 kids, correct? This seems like a pretty big decision to make without talking it over with each other. Ryan, what's your take on that?

I think I just hit a breaking point. This is really something that had built up over time. There's no way I'm going to be able to continue doing this and enjoy it and not feel stressed out around family. So I felt trapped and the only alternative I had was to just leave it.

This seems like not the only option. It seems like the nuclear of nuclear options. Yeah. And then like since that happened, which was how long ago?

2 years now.

Yeah. Like that stress you were experiencing at work, would you say that that stress is now in the home with the personal finances?

Yeah, I would agree.

Okay. Ryan says yes. Jamie, would you agree or disagree?

For a good year, I felt super stressful. He works now. He got another job. So I feel like we made it through that and he is so much happier at his current job. I feel like the stress is that we're not doing the right thing, not that we couldn't do the right thing.

I'm going to read you from your application once again. We need help connecting so our money talks stop ending in arguing, divorce threats, and nothing ever changing. This is an 8 out of 10 serious issue. This is the root of our major fights, which has left someone saying maybe this won't work out in the long run. I'm struck by the difference in how you describe it on your application versus just now.

I think that maybe I'm minimizing it because I, I don't want Ryan to feel bad that he left that job that he was unhappy about because I feel like he's so much happier now with what he does. I feel like we should be able to figure the money stuff out because this job makes him so much happier than the previous job does. And his happiness at work seems more important than the financial stress that it caused.

I think both things can be true. I think that you can be happy your partner is less stressed and more fulfilled at a new job, but you can be upset, resentful, surprised, shocked that they left a full-time job, cashed out a 401(k), and did not consult their wife, their financial partner. I think both those things can be true. What do you think?

I was definitely mad and I still probably harbor resentment about that decision-making without me, which again, leads to the distrust now, right? Because it's hard for me to trust somebody that made those big decisions when I don't even buy a new TV without asking him. About purchases, let alone making a huge decision like that.

And have there been times aside from Ryan leaving his job where the two of you did not trust each other with money?

So Ryan had another job and then that job turned into a hot mess. And so he quit that job and I came home and he told me he quit that job too. I think those things happening in that timeframe. Have led for me to need a lot of time to rebuild trust in major life decision-making things.

Okay. Ryan, what's your take?

When I picked up this next job and was doing the same thing at this new company and driving almost the same distance. So it took a few weeks to get into that and think, what am I doing? I just had a knee-jerk reaction, took the first job I could get and got into the same position.

Do you find yourself making impulsive decisions?

Yes. Money related, I'd say buying a car. That was probably the biggest and most impulsive outside of quitting the jobs.

Did you buy it and then tell Jamie that night?

I told her beforehand that we were going to look at potentially buying it.

Okay. What kind of car?

It's an older car. It's a 1969 Olds 442.

All right. So you're like, hey, we're going to go look at this car and then What happened?

He and his dad bought it.

Like on the spot?

We bought it on the spot. I went $70,000, he went $30,000 in on it, and then we had it shipped to the house. How much did it cost?

$24,500. How did you pay for it?

I had taken a loan against my IRA to cover it.

I, I have a question about your retirement accounts. My retirement accounts are one direction only. I only send money. I don't take it out of there. What's your relationship with retirement accounts? I'm curious.

I haven't had really any sort of liquid cash flow outside of what's to me feels like it's going toward bills. So when that opportunity came up to get the car, I thought the only place I have cash sitting is in that retirement account. So the thought was just I'd pay it back and have the interest go back in with it.

Wow. There's a lot to unpack here. What do you notice so far about the tenor of this conversation? To me, it's almost frantic. They both have a lot to say, but I can tell that Jamie especially is quite activated. In many ways, she almost seems energized. There's a lot of fast talking, no pauses. One sentence leads right into the next. This is quite common when I speak to couples. In fact, I start every conversation with my podcast guests giving them a couple of tips on answering questions concisely. I did that with Jamie and Ryan just a few minutes ago. And so I want to point this out because it tells me that she has probably bottled up these feelings for a long time. It's kind of like shaking a bottle of soda and then opening up and it just explodes. And truthfully, I don't blame her. Ryan quitting his job without so much as discussing it with his wife is totally unacceptable. It is a huge violation of trust, and I find it especially egregious because he could only make that decision as a result of Jamie's high income. And I'm guessing Jamie probably has not had a lot of people to talk to about this very issue. What's worse is that Ryan has continued making impulsive financial decisions like borrowing from his retirement to buy a classic car. These kinds of decisions have consequences, and I suspect there has never been a real reckoning of these decisions and the effect on their finances or their marriage. After the break, we're gonna take a look at the numbers in their conscious spending plan. Smart business owners know that $3 questions are not where you should be focusing your time. The lattes that you buy every morning are not the problem. It's the $30,000 questions that can make or break you. And for example, taxes are a major consideration for business owners. Have you optimized your tax strategy? Are you aware of the appropriate tax deductions? The truth is the biggest savings happen before you even file, and that's where our friends at Gelt can help. Gelt is a modern CPA firm that helps you take control of your tax strategy ahead of time. They'll help you think strategically, like how to structure your business, where to maximize key deductions, and how to use the tax code to your benefit. Plus, their platform makes it easy to stay organized, working with your tax team year round, not just when deadlines hit. So whether you are a business owner, whether you are self-employed, this is the proactive move you can make now to save thousands next April. If you want this tax season to actually work for you, not against you, go to joingelt.com/ramit to get started. As part of this community, you'll even get to skip the waitlist because this year it's not about catching up, it's about getting ahead. Okay, do me a favor. Open up your to-do list right now. What are the things that have been on there for months? Is it booking your next dental appointment? Is it checking up on your insurance deductible? Oh, I hate that. Or is it actually getting your estate plan in order? Well, good news, I can help you with the last one right now. In less than an hour, you can have peace of mind that your estate planning is sorted with the help of this episode's sponsor, Trust and Will. I recommend Trust and Will because they make estate planning easy. No scheduling appointments or digging through legal forms. Just go online, answer some simple questions, and it walks you through everything in less than an hour. My coworker recently created a will for her and her family on Trust and Will. Here's what she said. It was so easy. I just followed their prompts. I plugged in my beneficiaries, my assets, my personal preferences. In less than an hour, I had a will, power of attorney documents, last will and testament, and HIPAA authorizations, all of which I easily downloaded and could have them executed or checked by a for-hire attorney if I wanted. Plus, they have an excellent rating on Trustpilot, and they have helped hundreds of thousands of families protect what matters. I personally used an attorney for my own estate plan, but That's not an option for everyone. If that's you, Trust and Will is worth considering. Let Trust and Will uncomplicate the process for you. Protect what matters most in minutes at trustandwill.com/ramit and get 10% off plus free shipping. That's 10% off and free shipping at trustandwill.com/ramit. I want to take a look at your numbers. Jamie, can you read the word in bold and then the number next to it? In full for the entire net worth box, please.

Assets, $695,000. Investments, $670,000. Savings, $13,000. Debt, uh, $345,000. Total net worth, $1,033,000.

$1,033,000. What do you think about those numbers?

Sounds like a lot, but doesn't feel like a lot.

Oh, what would feel like a lot?

It'd probably feel better to have $50,000 in savings than $13,000 in savings.

$50,000 instead of $13,000. And if you had $50,000 in savings, how differently would you feel?

I'd feel better about that. I'd feel like if something were to go wrong or Ryan had to find a different job, we would have some money in savings that we could live on without having to put things on cards, or we wouldn't have to make giant changes to our lifestyle.

And Ryan, how do you feel about those numbers?

I'm a little surprised. I didn't expect it to be that high. As far as assets go, but I agree with Jamie. We desperately need more in cash as far as savings is concerned.

Do you both like cash?

I like cash, but long-term it's not going to get us to where we need to be. It makes me nervous.

So you don't like cash.

That's what I'm figuring out. Yeah. Yeah.

Like this very second, I think you might be realizing it.

Yeah.

And Jamie, do you like cash? Yes. Where's the cash then if you like it?

Good question. That's what I'm trying to figure out, why we can't stay on top of it.

Your net worth shows clues. So does the rest of the CSP. It's like your fingerprints. If you saw my CSP, you'd be like, this fucking guy loves cash, right? It's very obvious. And you'd also be like, what the fuck? This guy spends this much money on travel. Something's wrong with him. My point is, yeah, I don't think you both like cash. I think you talk about it. I don't think you really like it. Not enough to do something about it. And that's what I observed just from these 4 or 5 numbers so far. Shall we keep going? Yeah, absolutely. Ryan, can you read me off your combined gross monthly income, please?

It's $20,436.

Combined household income. The two of you make $245,232. Who here knew that? Jamie's hand is up. Ryan's hand is Tentatively up. Is that up? Both of you knew? Wait, that's great.

It's actually more than that because I didn't include my bonus money into that account.

Well, we got to put it in. So let's put in a number that you are very confident you're going to get.

So my base salary is $220,000 and I would imagine I would get at least $40,000 a year.

$40K more in bonus. All right. What do you think the net on that is?

So if I made $40,000 in bonus, I'd probably get $30,000.

Yeah. I'm going to change your net here. If we include your bonus and all that, your combined take-home pay per month is $18,475. How do y'all feel about that as an income?

It's like a lot.

Sounds really high. Okay, great. Sounds high. Doesn't feel high? No. Where does all the money go? We're about to find out. All right, let's look at the rest of this. Fixed costs.

What's that number?

40%. This already tells me your fixed costs are really low, which means you have a lot of extra money to play with. So I'm as perplexed as anyone right now. Where's the money going? It's certainly not going to your modest mortgage at $2,700. You got gas at $300. Nothing here is unreasonable. I have no comments. All right, let's keep going. Investments at 10%, savings at 8%. Oh, I wonder why there's no savings. Because you're not saving that much money. That's pretty obvious. And then finally, guilt-free spending. What the fuck is this number? $9,500 a month in guilt-free spending or 52% of net. Is that number right?

So when we had done this before, there was a column for like miscellaneous in our other expenses. And so I just put like $1,000 of it into that other box. It's not on this one. Okay.

So you put $1,000 for miscellaneous in your fixed costs. I don't mind that. Recreate it right now. I don't know where that freaking thing disappeared, but we'll just add an extra $1,000 and watch what happens. Your fixed costs jumped to 46%. Still fine. Still great. And then if we go all the way down, you have $8,590 left in guilt-free spending. Do y'all spend $8,500 a month? Absolutely not.

Jamie? No, but apparently, yeah.

Am I in Alice in Wonderland right now? What in the hell is happening right now? Both people give me the same no, but yes answer. Question: have you noticed some of the answers you've already given me have been quite contradictory? Yeah. Confusing, right?

Okay.

And I think there's a, like, a blame game, right? I think it just goes back and forth. Yes.

What do you get out of that?

I get to go on vacation because I think if we're just going to spend the money anyway and you want to spend it on that stuff, then I want to take our whole family and I want to go on vacation.

And Ryan, what do you get out of the blame game?

I think that's where my spending comes into play as far as like getting a couple pairs of jeans or getting a few pairs of shoes throughout the month. I'm like, all right, Jamie has said these things to me. She gets what she wants. I'm just going to buy these clothes, feel better about myself, and then go about my day.

How come no one ever gets in the savings game? Like instead of the blame game, they're like, I'm going to save 18%. No, I'm going to save 22%. How come no one ever plays that game except the FIRE community?

I think that's where the trust comes into play. Who's going to save it? And then if it's in an account, she's got the savings. How do I know nothing's being pulled out of it?

Aren't you guys married with 3 kids? What is this? Do you, do you have joint accounts?

So we have a joint checking account that has an attached savings account to it. We put a lot of our money into that, and then I was getting annoyed that It was gone every month. So then I just put less into it. And that's how I got our $13,000 into a savings account because it was down to almost nothing. And I've been putting the money into there to try to prevent it from being spent by putting it into a different account.

So remember when your kids were younger and you don't want them to get something, you like put it up on top of the fridge or something where they can't reach. It's interesting that the way you treat your savings account is like putting something in a higher up cabinet so a little kid can't reach it. Let me pull the money out of there and put it over here. That way he won't spend it. And that is the only way that we were able to build up $13,000. What do you think about that?

I don't want it to have to feel like that. For years I didn't do it that way. And then I just got frustrated. He's a grownup. He can do what he wants to do. And if he is okay with using the carryover cash, and I don't know how to stop someone from doing that, because to me, if I look in our account and we don't have enough money or whatever, I'm not gonna go out to dinner that night and just be like, oh, it's fine, I'll catch up when I get paid tomorrow. That's not how I look at it. Okay. But that's how Ryan looks at it.

I feel like there's a lot bubbling up for you when I ask these questions. Am I reading that correctly?

Yeah, you are. It gets me going cuz I get anxious about it. It's overwhelming and I don't enjoy being like the only one who's worrying about it. Mm-hmm. So then I feel like I have to protect it, but then the cycle turns into me getting annoyed that I'm the only one protecting it. And then I'm like, forget it. This is the way it's going to be. And we'll just not have any savings because I don't want to be the only one worrying about it.

Do you feel energized when you get worked up?

No, I think it's the opposite. I feel like depleted.

You don't look depleted to me when you're answering, when you're on one of those runs, it's never ending. It's one clause after another. You don't look depleted to me. You actually look quite energized. Like you have a never-ending source of energy. How does that strike you?

I do think my brain is a constant running. I go from just one tangent to the other, thinking about one thing and how it leads to the next thing and how it leads to the next thing and how that leads to the next thing.

Okay. Ryan, how does it strike you to hear my analogy of putting something up high on the shelf from a child? But in this case, it's Jamie taking family money and putting it in a separate savings account so that you don't pull it out and spend it.

I feel it. And to me, it's not spending on what I would consider frivolous things. That's taking away income that I would buy things for the house. Right? So fertilizer, grass seed, and what I ended up doing then is realizing how low we are in cash in the checking account and then putting it on a credit card. And then I'd build that credit card up as a result.

Wait, at what point do you talk to Jamie and say, Hey, we don't have any money in the account. Can we discuss?

Nothing preemptively. It's always after the fact, like, hey, I bought this. It's on the credit card. Need to pay this off.

Okay. How much of this is because of Jamie's high income? Because the disparity between the income is quite stark on a monthly basis. Jamie is taking home $16,275. Brian has taken home $2,200. Did you all behave the same way with money when you were earning more?

I think we did. And that's what frustrated me. And when I think back on it, and even I remember even thinking this when I was working there and making more money, it didn't matter how much money I was paid or how much of a raise I got, it seemed to just disappear.

Where did it go?

I would say eating out.

Come on. Where did it go? I mean, sure, a few thousand to eating out, fine. What else?

The house, especially. There's a lot of work that we've done with the house. Renovations?

Yes. What else? Jamie, where'd the money go?

I mean, I do put like money into the kids' college savings accounts. So there's money going into that every year or every month. Vacations.

Um, sorry, Jamie.

I don't feel like we really started taking vacations until the last few years. I don't know. We're just wasting it. Kids are expensive. Don't get me wrong. Like when our son plays a travel sport, that's very pricey. They're heavily involved in stuff that costs money. So that's some of it goes to all of those things. I'm sure. Okay.

A couple of things I note from your conscious spending plan, your savings at $13,000 is roughly 2 months of living expenses, less than 2 months. So if the income went away, particularly if something happened to Jamie, lost her job, got injured, something like that, y'all have about 6 weeks. Of money to live on. Were you aware of that?

Yeah. I think that's the scary part, especially with her being the breadwinner here. I don't know how I would even be able to manage it.

Jamie, what's your take on that?

There's no world where I could not work.

It's a kind of an odd dynamic to be making $260,000, $270,000 a year and to say there is no world where I cannot work. Does this strike you as a bit weird?

No, that's the way the world is, right? Everybody has to work.

Not me. Do you want me to tell you why? I don't mean that to be insensitive. I don't just mean it's because I have a lot of money. It's because when I started my career, I said to myself, I love what I do. I love working, but I want the option to not have to work at a certain point. But then do you know what I did? I made a rule for myself that I would invest and I was very aggressive. With my percentages, roughly 20% of gross. And it was just like, I'm gonna hit this number. I'm gonna do it every single month, every single year automatically. And when I get big old unexpected income, I'm gonna put that money overwhelmingly in investments. And over time, over decades, it grew. It was not magic, it was just consistency. And I refused to be in a position where I have to work all the time just to pay for stuff that I bought. No, I'm not gonna let the tail wag the dog. I'm in control. So when you say, isn't that the way it has to be? I go, no, not if you are making $265,000 a year.

Yeah. So I went through a very expensive divorce that probably wiped out most of what I had, but I continued to at least contribute to all my retirement and stuff through all that. When I was on my own, I was just like transferring my credit cards to another thing to pay off the lawyers and the fees and all that other stuff. But I was always at least trying to put money into my retirement. All the time thinking I was doing the right thing. I paid off my loans even in residency so that I could get all that stuff. So I felt like I made good choices from what I knew to try to do the right thing through all that.

You've listened to my podcast a lot, right? Yeah. Okay. I want you to think for a second here. You're making $250,000 or so per year, ballpark. What do you think about your specific financial behavior? When it comes to saving and investing?

I should be putting more money into saving, but continuing to put the same amount into my retirement account too.

Okay.

You would want to put more in?

Yeah, I would.

Why don't you?

At this point, it hasn't felt like I had extra to put in there to do that.

Okay. Your debt payments of $375 a month. What is the debt for?

The $375, that sounds like a payment toward one of my credit cards. There's about $10,500 on a credit card right now.

Okay. What other debt do you have?

Our house. How much? About $310,000.

$310,000.

Okay.

What else?

That's it. That's it. Mortgage and credit card.

There should be another credit card out there that vacations go on. I know I keep saying vacations over and over, but we do put that money on a credit card.

It gets paid off, right?

For the most part, it has gotten paid off because I get my bonus money. I pay off the vacation and that's how I paid for our vacation. So that's where that rotation has come from. So every month I've been able to pay it all off with the exception of maybe $2,000 or $3,000.

Jamie, Ryan, what is going on here? Can I just fix this for you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Please.

A couple making almost $300,000 a year should not use a bonus to retroactively pay off their vacations. That's insane. A couple making almost $300,000 a year should not have $10,500 of credit card debt. That makes no sense at all. A couple with 46% fixed costs should not be talking about where's our money going. You have way low fixed costs. You have tons and tons of money extra every single month. What is going on here? I don't feel like you're actually hearing me. It's a lot of I'm lost in the weeds and I'm retelling my story and I need to be heard. But what is happening with these numbers?

Almost all of it is in eating out and just blowing it on like going to the movies. I mean, we probably eat out. 15, 20 times a week on various things of going out with our family for dinner, going out with our friends for whatever. I spent $200 to get a facial once a month at the spa thingy. Then Ryan decided to do the same thing. So now we both spend money on doing that. And it's just stupid shit. That's what we spend the money on. And that's what's so dumb about all of it is that none of that is important to me. And we talk about what is your rich life thing that you want. And so for me, I just want to be able to leave Indiana and go on vacation somewhere and get out of here 3 times a year. That's really what's important to me. So I guess I am taking that money and using it to spend to go to do those things 3 times, 4 times a year. And the rest of it, I don't know. And that's, it's an honest answer because I look at the numbers and everything is just like stupid stuff. None of it is meaningful purchases. It's just a whole bunch of dumb things.

The way that you keep saying stupid and dumb is your unconscious way of escaping accountability for spending money on things you actually like, but you refuse to admit. A $200 facial is not stupid to you. You actually love it. Eating out 20 times a week is not stupid. You actually love it and you are spending money on it. So I would encourage you to stop calling it stupid and dumb and to actually maybe reflect on the idea that you might actually value that. More than leaving Indiana 3 or 4 times a year. Your spending clearly reflects it. Now, if you want to change it, we can change it, but you gotta stop demeaning your own spending. You would never talk to your youngest like that, or any of your kids for that matter. But we are so comfortable talking to ourselves like that. We use it both as a way to bring ourselves down and to escape the idea that I might actually be the kind of person who likes to spend money eating out 20 times a week. And if that is true, if it wasn't just a stupid thing that I did, 'cause I'm dumb, then what does that actually make me? Jamie, I don't think you're stupid. I don't think you're stupid either, Ryan. I think you make certain choices and they may be in opposition to what you state is your rich life vision. All of us are to some degree out of alignment with what our rich life vision is. That's normal. That's human. I'm out of alignment with my rich life vision. We all are, but I'm not stupid and I don't think you are either. How many couples have I talked to who earn a high income and then they come and tell me, yeah, but it doesn't feel like a lot of money. All right, let's tackle this for a second because you might roll your eyes, but I want you to think about it. Money is invisible. It's amorphous. A lot of people don't even realize that their 401(k) counts as investments, and a lot of people also don't realize that their portfolio accounts as real money. Most people candidly just gauge their financial health by whatever's in their checking account, and that is the level that they are operating on. So if we want to help them, we have to meet them there. The bigger issue is that Jamie and Ryan have no shared vision. In fact, it almost seems like they're adversaries, each in their own corner of the ring. You bought 3 pairs of shoes, so I'm going to spend thousands of dollars on a vacation out of spite. They also say one thing, then contradict it 5 minutes later. It all just feels very confusing. It's like a stew where all kinds of ingredients have just blended together and it's hard to get to the root of what is in it. Now, we can fix that. But what really concerns me is the language that they use about themselves. Over and over, I heard words like stupid and dumb to describe their own behavior. And when you start from that place, when your default setting is shame and berating yourself, Gosh, it's really hard to make a positive change. Forget about feeling joy. Most people are just working to get to neutral. It's like someone is drowning and their only goal is to get a breath of air. Forget about me sitting over here talking about a rich life. If you feel like you are drowning, you just want to breathe. But I have to say, they have to realize there's a bigger life than simply getting to take a breath because very few people are motivated by merely surviving. And that means they have to change the way they talk about money. If they don't, the numbers don't matter. They'll keep repeating the same patterns over and over because this goes deeper than just numbers. If this sounds familiar, if you are ready to change the way you talk about money and get to the root of what's going on, I wanna encourage you to join my money coaching program. I tackle this very subject so you can stop agonizing over random purchases, and I will show you exactly how to spend more on the things you love. You'll get access to monthly coaching calls with me, plus a whole community to hold you accountable as you go through the program. Sign up at iwt.com/moneycoaching so that your money conversations can move you forward. That's iwt.com/moneycoaching. Think about how many photos you've taken in the last 6 months that you will probably never look at again. I know I've done it. But not anymore. Thanks to Aura Frame, you can quickly send your favorite photos in seconds and have them displayed in your home all year long. Aura Frames are beautiful digital photo frames that are easy to set up and can hold an unlimited number of photos and videos on a rotating display. My colleague recently took her kids to Disney, and on the way back, she uploaded the photos from that day to her Aura Frame. She told me, when we got home, the photos were already displayed in the living room. My kids and I loved getting to watch them and relive the magic all over again. Plus, you can preload the frame with photos before you give it as a gift, and then anyone can update the gallery throughout the year when you have more to share. It is the perfect gift for family. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's bestselling Carver Mat frames. It's named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code Ramit at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames.com, promo code Ramit. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get them in time for the holidays. Support this show by mentioning us at checkout. Code Ramit. Terms and conditions apply. One of my coworkers recently signed up for DeleteMe and they've been removing her personal information from all kinds of data broker sites. But then she got an email from Whitepages and it said, click this link to confirm data removal. She asked DeleteMe what to do, and they told her exactly how to respond word for word, and it worked. Whitepages took her data down. Here's how DeleteMe works. You give them your information once, and in about a week, they will send you back a full privacy report where your data is, what they found, and what they are removing. They scan a bunch of people search sites and data brokers for your personal information, including your name, phone number, old emails, even relatives' names, and then they get it removed and they keep going, patrolling, monitoring those sites all year to make sure that it stays gone. DeleteMe built their own technology and they have real privacy advisors to help you when you need it. They've been the experts in this for over 15 years and they work with everyone from judges to journalists. I've trusted them to protect my own personal information and my parents too. You'll get 20% off all consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/ramitsethi. And use promo code Ramit at checkout. That's joindelete.me.com/Ramit, code Ramit for 20% off.

Smart people can make stupid choices, and so I think that some of the choices we make are not the wisest decisions.

Okay, so what do you want to do with your stupid decisions, as you call them?

So we decided that we were going to say that we got $500 apiece to spend however we wanted, and immediately, like, I felt like that went out the window on month 1.

Why do you think that happened?

I think it's all about just doing what feels like we need to do in that moment, right? So we're out somewhere and we could go home and eat at home, but we choose to just go somewhere and do that cuz it's easier or it's, it's convenient.

It's very interesting talking to someone who graduated from medical school describing themselves as, I just do whatever's easiest. You know, I have a lot of friends and family who are doctors and it's not easy at all. How do you explain the dichotomy?

I'm not sure.

Okay. That's a good answer. That's honest. Ryan, what about you? You all set this $500 rule. What happened?

Yeah, I think I realized how quickly that $500 is spent when we're eating out as a family. That's 5 of us. So I felt like I tried to mitigate how much we were spending by just saying Jamie and I go out to eat, leave the kids, they can eat what's at home. But then we would hit that cap and Jamie would make a comment being like, all right, this is part of your $500. So then I was like, I'm never going to be able to adhere to that.

That's the bargaining of we don't really want to abide by what we set. So let's start to negotiate a way out of this. We both know we're not going to take this number seriously. So like, that'll be part of your money. This doesn't count because it's Sunday, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the thing is, who are you bargaining against? It's like when I used to run track, we'd have to run all in these neighborhoods and our coach wouldn't follow us. And of course we want to cheat. We want to get in somebody's car and just have them drive us home. We're miles away. And what he would try to teach us was like, you're not cheating anyone but yourself. You're actually supposed to be running to condition yourself. When you are bargaining with each other, who are you actually winning against?

Nobody.

No one. You're winning against your own arbitrary rule that you set up. I suspect you don't really have a reason why. Why 500?

Anybody know? I think I picked a number that I thought we could do, that we could abide by, that didn't seem like too little.

But did you grow up religious, Jamie? No. No.

Wow.

You grew up in the Midwest?

Oh yeah.

Did you grow up with mom and dad?

Mm-hmm. My dad became disabled, so my mom worked, but my mom was always super pissed off, resentful, because she had always planned on being the wife that stayed home with the kid and didn't work. And then when he became sick, she had to work full-time all those years and didn't enjoy that. But it was save everything, spend nothing. Everything had a price tag. So like, if I wanted a pair of shoes that cost $75, well, in her mind, it should cost $40. So if I wanted them, I'd have to pay that difference sort of thing. And even now, she shops at Goodwill, but not because she has to, but because that's the right thing to do because it saves money.

How is she doing financially?

She saved herself a decent amount of money, and for a single woman, she does just fine. I've seen her money, and she could afford to buy a new couch if she wanted to. Wow. But she feels like she shouldn't because the way she was raised, you help take care of your parents, you help take care of your kids. And so that money is not to be spent even by her, which I obviously tell her is insane and she should take the trip to Alaska or whatever.

Moms love Alaskan cruises, by the way. I don't know what mom magazine these Alaskan cruises advertise in, but like every single mom in America loves an Alaskan cruise. We went on an Alaskan cruise when we were kids because my mom was like, we gotta go to Alaska. We're like, what? All right. We went and we had a great time, but what is this Moms of America?

Yeah. My parents are doing the same thing. It's hilarious.

Bingo, man. They have a lock on American moms. It is crazy. All right. What other phrases did your parents use about money when you were young?

Money doesn't grow on trees. My dad was a spender. My mom was a not spender. So. Every time he would come home with something remotely expensive, oh, do we really need that? Why did you get that?

Like, for example, if he came home with 3 pairs of shoes, your mom would say, did you really need those?

Oh yeah. But he could buy 1 pair of shoes and she would've said the same thing to him.

Now that you make more than presumably your family made, what's that like?

It's kind of weird. I remember when I bought this house, I felt guilty about buying a house that was bigger because I felt like I was bragging. I don't like to buy fancy things or I'm not like really into all that stuff necessarily because that's just not how I was raised.

All right, Ryan, what about you? What do you remember about your family saying about money when you were growing up?

My dad handled the finances for the most part. So my mom really didn't have a grasp of what was going on. He'd always make comments. We may need to save more or we may not have enough for vacation, which to me was frustrating because I had friends going on more than one vacation a year. We'd always go on one, but that one vacation was always in question. Yet he's one that was not afraid to spend on himself. I just talked about it this week with my mom, seeing him ride by on a motorcycle and the family not knowing. And I was like, hey, is that dad? And sure enough it was. And that's how she found out he had bought a motorcycle. Looking back, I'm like, why would that not be spent on family and a vacation versus something for himself? So I think it was very deceiving. They didn't share a lot together. On what was being spent.

Wow. What do you think you took away from that?

From what I saw from him and what I've seen myself do, it feels like, all right, I'm dealing with an issue or I'm frustrated or stressed. I feel like things might fix it, but that's never the case. I actually will walk out thinking, what the hell am I doing?

What about the part about buying stuff and not telling anybody else?

That's exactly what I did in those couple of instances with Jamie. I don't feel like it's a trend, but the times I did do it were so impactful that we won't forget it.

How much of your financial behavior is extremely similar or identical to your dad's?

I would say it's similar in smaller amounts, right? I'm not buying a piece of land. I'm buying shoes.

Okay. Anything that you do that is opposite of what your dad did?

I do tell Jamie. I may not tell her right away, but I try to be transparent, like, hey, I did get these shoes. And I had guilt, especially when I wasn't working, to be spending what I consider her money.

You grew up in the Midwest too?

I did.

Yep. I got to tell you, from me to two Midwest people, I'm not particularly interested when Midwest people tell me about how they feel guilty. It's like an Indian person saying, I feel like I'm constantly consumed with taking off my shoes when I come home. It's yeah. And it's just so ever-present, so common that it actually has lost any meaning. Because like in the Midwest, part of the culture is you talk about guilt all the time. I'm guilty about this. I'm guilty about that. And so I think sometimes people over-index on it. Oh my gosh, I feel guilty about this or that, but it actually doesn't tell me anything. If somebody else in a different geographic area was talking about guilt, I would be more mindful of it. But the Midwest person telling me I feel guilty about this, I'm like, and okay, you feel guilty about how much you fed your goldfish yesterday. Not really relevant. Moving on. Anybody disagree with me from the Midwest? I need to hear it from you. Am I wrong or right on this?

No.

Yeah. Especially people who are older than us.

Yeah. They love it. They fucking love it. It's like food. It's food. They talk about it. They revel in it. If they're not guilty, who are they? Oh God. I'm gonna hear from everyone in the Midwest. But the thing is, I'm gonna hear from them being like, you're right. I know I'm right. I fucking said it. I tested it with 2 people from the Midwest. They just agreed with me. All right. Thinking back to the lessons you observed from your families when you were growing up, what lessons do you think you bring into this relationship with money?

I definitely have the tendencies of my mom to feel bad about spending money on myself. I think that's. For sure, or just spending large amounts of money on something that you could get cheaper somewhere else. But I think I also have some of my dad in the sense that if I really want something, I'm not going to obsess and feel bad about really buying it because I work hard.

What's an example of something you spend on that you don't feel guilty about?

Like going to get my facial once a month.

Wait, you just called them stupid and dumb 5 minutes ago.

No, the facial part's not. It's the eating out that's stupid and dumb. Ah, okay. I'm not like a hair, nails. I don't go get my nails done. I don't get pedicures. I don't do that stuff. But Ryan did talk me into not feeling bad about it. I'll give him that. You deserve that once a month. You should go do it. So I do, but I don't feel bad about it anymore.

Okay. Ryan, what about you? What lessons do you bring to this relationship with money?

I would say withholding information.

So your dad didn't talk about certain things. He withheld. You do the same. What else? What other lessons?

That things don't buy happiness or fix any of the problems that I have.

He used to buy things to fix unhappiness. You do the same? Absolutely, yeah. And there's got to be something about your dad buying a motorcycle, just showing up with it, and you buying a car and quitting two jobs and just telling Jamie about it.

Yeah, I think so.

Jamie, are you resentful that you earn the bulk of the household income?

No, I feel resentful that Ryan quit that job without telling me, but it was never really about the money. It was really about not being a part of a decision, not so much the money part of it.

Okay. Interesting. Jamie, you mentioned that you went through divorce and it sounds like there were some pretty substantial financial costs. How do you think that changed the way that you view money?

I think I probably bring some baggage of PTSD about that marriage and how money worked out there, and I probably unfairly bring some of that to Ryan, and he does not necessarily do the same things that my ex-spouse did, but I found out about things after the fact there that also were shocking and I didn't know about. And so when these things have happened, I think it brought up a lot of PTSD financially for me.

Prenup or postnup? No. Did you discuss it?

No. Why not? I don't feel like that's a Midwestern thing to do. I don't know anybody that has one, and I guess it never even crossed my mind as being something people do.

You know what, I said the same exact thing when I was thinking about it. It's not the Indian thing to do, and I just didn't know any Indian people who were wealthy at a young age because a lot of the Indian people that I grew up with became doctors and engineers. They often become wealthy, but later in life. Yeah. I'm also asking because you mentioned that there's not ironclad trust with each other when it comes to money?

I didn't feel that way when we started our marriage at all. Like when I met Ryan, he had zero debt. He had never had even had a credit card. He got through college without owning any money. He lived on his own and took care of himself.

Did something change?

I mean, I think when the job stuff switched over somewhere in there, the credit card thing became a thing. And I think that's where the trust part of it probably escalated. After all of that, because Ryan made, made less then than he does now. And it was the same dynamic as far as financially who made how much. That was about the same then. I don't think it was about like the amount of money.

I wanna pause here for a moment before we continue. In this next part of our conversation, Jamie shares a deeply personal story about losing a child, and it is very heartbreaking. And I also know that it might be difficult for some listeners to hear. So if that is you, Please feel free to skip ahead or mute for the next 2 minutes.

And also, I had a really rough go of 2017. We had a son that was born without kidneys and passed away right after he was born. I got pregnant shortly after that again, and our daughter was born 3 months early and spent 2 months in the NICU in the hospital. And all of that happened in 2017. So I think that year was really transformative for he and I, and it was a really shitty year. All that stuff happened bad at once and it was a lot of stress and pressure. That's really, I think, prompted our going to therapy and stuff, was mostly about trying to get through all that sadness through that year. So I think that somewhere around that time, something changed.

I'm so sorry. I did not know that. I'm so glad that you went to therapy. I can't even imagine how difficult that was. Do you feel like that experience brought you closer, or was it a wedge between you that never brought you closer?

Initially, we were quiet, drifted a little bit, but then at the end of the day, we had to communicate with each other, talk about how we were feeling. In the end, where we are now, it's brought us closer in that regard.

I'm really thankful you just shared that with me. It really provides a whole different context for me because, you know, what, what was a horrific tragedy could have very easily created a wedge between you, split you apart. But the fact that you went to therapy and that you are here And yes, we're talking about money and we're talking about shoes and savings. Yes. But in comparison to what you have been through, this really provides such a different perspective. So the fact that you were able to, as you put it, come closer together to me is a really positive clue that we can make the money work. Money's important, but it's certainly not the most important thing in a rich life. So thank you for sharing that. Jamie, speaking of trust, what do you think would need to happen financially speaking for you to be able to trust Ryan?

Work together to get the savings thing and work on his own retirement account. I think to see that he is gonna do it, he says he's gonna do it, but never has done it. Mm-hmm. I think putting your money where your mouth is like, okay, are we really gonna do this? And I think that's step one for me.

You wanna hit the, a certain number, $50,000 in savings? And you want him to be contributing something to his retirement. Yeah. Okay. Ryan, how does that sound to you?

It sounds needed. I'm nervous about retirement. I've got to start putting things in retirement. It's just hard because I feel like we've got to have that liquid cash to pay whatever we need to pay.

It's not that hard. You make $300,000 a year. What's hard?

I guess I don't think of it like that. I think of like, all right, I've got my paycheck coming in. What is that going to go toward?

That's because you all think of yourselves as individuals, not as a team. Yeah, of course it's hard to put $50,000 in savings and save for retirement when you're making $36,000 a year. It's almost impossible. But you're not, you're not making $36,000 a year solo. You're a couple making almost $300,000. Why are we not thinking like that?

Like, I don't ever think about the money as just being mine. I always think about it like, this is what we're going to need.

But then why do you say that you want Ryan to put money in his retirement account?

Because I think he would feel better about it for himself. I think it bothers him that he doesn't do it.

Yeah, it's definitely true. I'm somebody that would catastrophize.

What did you catastrophize when you cashed out all your retirement accounts?

Oh, I definitely did. Are you kidding?

I don't believe that. I don't believe— I believe that you were just like, yeah, I'll just pay this back at some point.

Oh yeah. I feel like when I did that, good things were coming.

That's a dreamer. That's not catastrophizing. That's the opposite. A dreamer has never catastrophized in their fucking life.

Yeah.

They go, I'll just get that next job. I'll get this next thing. The next gig will come over. They don't catastrophize about anything. They go, it'll be fine. And why can they do that? Because they're usually subsidized by somebody else, their spouse or parents or an inheritance or something. Yeah. If you were solo, Ryan, and you were making $36,000 a year, you would not be like, oh, I'll just wait for this gig and I'll cash this thing out. You'd be like, holy shit, I need to be on top of my numbers down to the penny.

Yeah. If I weren't in the position I'm in, I wouldn't have left Schwab.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly. And I think I've said that to Jamie.

No, you've never said that to me though. You've never said that.

You helped me get through transitioning to something I want to do.

It's meaningful to me that you said that because I don't feel like you've ever said that to me. I think that's how I was like, man, does he realize we can do this together sort of thing. But I don't think that you'd ever really expressed that you felt like that was true too.

Yeah, I guess not. What does it mean, Jamie, that Ryan said that to you just now?

It makes me feel good that he gets it. I guess I have felt like he's never really gotten it, that this impacted both of us in such a way that I didn't feel that he understood that, how I was feeling.

I think that if somebody can afford to make life or career decisions because of their spouse, then it is their obligation to talk to their spouse. Like, to me, it is a complete unacceptable move to make life or career decisions without speaking to your spouse, consulting your spouse, really taking their opinion. Especially when they are the ones providing the financial cover. Because if you did not have that cover, you would not have made that decision. And so to just come home and just be like, yeah, I quit, like 0% acceptable. It's like taking a spear to any trust that's been built up and it just destroys it. To rebuild it is something that can be done. And I think Ryan, what I'm hearing from Jamie is I don't think you've really gone through the process of rebuilding that trust. Hey, I realized when I made that decision, it was impulsive, and I only made that decision because, yeah, I was hurting and I didn't love the job and the commute was nerve-wracking to me, but I only made that decision in part because I knew that you would have my back. And I've never really told you that, and I never really told you how much I appreciate that, and I won't take it for granted again. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that I might say. Jamie, how would that resonate with you?

Yeah, that would mean a lot because I love Ryan. And I love that him do this job really lights him up. Like he comes home and he's like, guess what I got? I came up with this program today and it's the community is enjoying it and it's got all this stuff and, and it makes him happy. And I, I love that for him.

I like this energy right here where you both are sharing the best parts about each other. I really love that because it tells me that when you can do that, you can be a team. And when you can be a team, you can apply that same teamwork to money. Hard to be a team when you are in your own corners of the boxing ring and pointing fingers at the other one. Also hard to be a team when you're in the boxing corner and you're beating yourself up. I'm dumb. I shouldn't have done that. So whether it's attacking a partner or attacking yourself, that's not teamwork. Teamwork is actually, hey, it's the two of us against the world. What do we want? How are we going to get there? Sure, it might take a little bit of this, it might take a little bit of that. You're better at this, I'm better at that. Let's figure it out and make it work. But it's the two of you against the world, and I know that you have done that before, and hopefully that's what we can do for the rest of our time together. Candidly, the first part of this conversation was a little frustrating, but now that they have shared this story about losing a child, suddenly I feel a lot more connected. Suddenly I have a lot more understanding for why they are doing the things they are doing. Going through that unimaginable loss puts their financial struggles in a new perspective. I have to say that I'm grateful they were willing to share, and the way that they talk about how they process their grief through therapy, through time together, gives me a whole new appreciation for them after hearing what they've gone through. The $10,000 in credit card debt feels small. Yes, we need to fix it, but from my perspective, that's nothing compared to what they have already survived. And that makes me hopeful because if they've made it through something as difficult as losing a child, then they have a deep well of resilience that they can draw from. Again, I think they're stronger than they think. And up next, we're gonna start putting that strength to work. It's time to talk about shared goals and building a rich life together. My amazing wife has taught me a lot of things. She certainly leveled up my style. She certainly taught me to stop and celebrate more, something I did not used to do. But she also taught me about the fashion industry, specifically its sales tactics around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. She basically has a rule of not falling for sales gimmicks for things you don't actually care about, but you are tempted to buy them just because they're on discount. Instead, use a tool like Rocket Money to stay on target with your conscious spending plan. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Just link your accounts to start, and it lays everything out— your subscriptions, your bills, your due dates. You can customize it with your conscious spending plan like a lot of our readers do. Rocket Money has saved users over $2.5 $1.2 billion, including over $880 million in canceled subscriptions alone. Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/ramit today. That's rocketmoney.com/ramit. Rocketmoney.com/ramit. So I've heard a bit from you, Jamie. You have described the vision as you'd like to get to roughly $50,000 in savings and you would like Ryan to contribute to his retirement. Ryan, what's your vision?

My vision is very similar to that, although I think what's priority for me is to remove liabilities. House is probably the biggest one, and that stresses me out the most because in my mind I'll think, okay, new driveway, $80,000, new Master bath, $50,000. And already we're years down the road of how much salary just in paying to update the house. Okay.

So does anybody want the freaking driveway? No. So then why are we talking about the driveway? I thought we're talking about rich life.

That's where his mind goes. Like the things that need to get done.

This is another thing that Midwest grandpas do. Their entire life is a fucking checklist of like yard work. That's it. Like, what's the meaning of your life? They're like, meaning? I need to clean out the back porch. I didn't ask what the fuck is on your to-do list, Grandpa. I asked what is the rich life vision?

I don't want that.

You're that, Ryan. You're that. Just give it 40 more years and you're that. What's happening right now? Here, let's talk about what you do want, not what you don't want.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay.

I want to travel. I want a home base that we can come to. And is clean and open. And I don't have to worry about what needs done or fixed or how old it is. I want to more worry about like, all right, what's our travel plans with this new location or travel abroad? That's what I want my focus to be. That's what I want my rich life to be.

All right. That sounds pretty good. Jamie, do you disagree with any of that?

So Brian and I have a big sticking point on this house. Like he feels like it's going to cave in on us and we're going to die. And anyone else would tell you our house is quite Lovely. I feel like we have two older kids. They're going to go out, move out into the world. It's going to be the three of us. We can sell this house and get something smaller, just the three of us. And I'm not worried about the house at all.

All right. So hold on. Let's just figure this house thing out. Is it going to cave in? Is this like a safety issue, Ryan?

It's not. It's the amount of time I've spent working on it that is frustrating. What if you just don't? Yeah, that's the key, right? It's hard for me to walk through and not look at something that I've I don't like and think that needs to change.

I can't empathize at all. I'm like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? I'm like, just destroy your toolbox. You'll be like me. You don't have any tools to fix anything. And then what can you do?

Yeah, that sounds great.

I guess I'm just still struck, like, all the contradictions that keep coming up today. Like, I'm trying to talk about a rich life, and then we spend 5 minutes talking about what you don't want to do. And I'm like, y'all are both adults. If you don't want to do something, don't do it. If you want to do something, then do it. What's happening right now? Because I'm trying to understand what your rich life is so that we can use the numbers to live it. Do you want to fix the house? Because we can fix the house. Or do you not want to fix the house?

I don't want to fix the house.

Okay, so who's arguing that it has to be fixed?

I guess I'm contradicting myself there and saying it should be fixed. I've spent so many years thinking that, and then within the last few months, 6 months, whatever, stopped. I don't want to fix it. So I can see there is a way out. I just felt like the only way to get out was to fix it.

The tail is wagging the dog. The idea that I've thought this for so many years, and now if I change my mind, who will I be? And what does it say about me that for the last decade, I've been beating the drum of fixing this house, If I just abandoned that, am I a loser? Was I wrong?

I think I was wrong. I just don't think I fully understood how I was spending my time and what it was actually accomplishing.

All right. So your rich life, Ryan, is to have a simple place that you can live in. Jamie, your rich life, it sounds like, is keep the house until the two kids go to college. Then you downsize for the three of you. Sounds like the two of you want to travel a bit more. You want to get the $50K in savings. Anything else?

So I did like the calculator, how much I would have to have in retirement to retire at 60. And it was like $4.5 million. I know I need to change something if I'm going to get to that at 60. So whatever I would need to do to figure that out.

You want to retire at 60? Am I hearing you right?

If that could be what I would do, then that's what I would want to do.

So if you retired at age 60, that would mean Ryan would also retire at the same time at age 50?

That sounds like a pipe dream, but my dad died at 62. My parents were going to wait till 65 and they were going to live this whole dream of retirement and never got to do any of that. And so I don't want to wait till I'm so old that bad things happen. I never get to enjoy any of that. So Ryan and I being almost 10 years different, he would be 51 by when I was 60. So I don't know if that's realistic, but maybe we'll find out.

Ryan, are you down with that?

Yeah, that sounds great. I would love to retire at 50. And at one time I felt like maybe that could have been the case, but I'm feeling pretty doubtful at this point.

Let's take a look. I want to know what happens if we just ended the call right now. We didn't really make any substantive changes. Fast forward 5 years. What do you think would happen?

I think I would try to compensate in some way. Either I'm getting a job that pays more doing similar to what I had done before. To try to make up for what we're not saving, or the cycle continues.

And Jamie, we like to think we would get off this call and be like, okay, we looked at these numbers and they don't make sense. I would like to hope that we can talk about it out loud, then translate that into like meaningful change. I would hope that we can do that. But as far as how to keep putting money into things other than trying to save more, I don't really know how to do that part of it different than what I'm already doing.

I think it's interesting, your answers, because Ryan, you said you would try to compensate, get a higher paying job. But the fact is you had a much higher paying job and nothing really changed. Your savings didn't really grow when you were making 3, 4 times more. The two of you were not talking about money. It was just like you made enough that you didn't really have to think about it. There was no shared vision, even making $300-something thousand a year. And Jamie, I think you could probably save a bunch of money, but I just feel like that's playing so small. Like, what a tragedy to just narrow your field of vision to saving $50K. For me, if I'm making your income, I can knock that out so fast. It's easy. And I want to help you do that. But there's so much more to life than having $50K or $60K in a savings account. There's, of course, investing more. There's learning the skill of spending money meaningfully, which I don't think is happening right now. I think a lot of it's just unconsciously going to random stuff. And then most importantly, at the highest level of personal finance, it's always about the who. Who can I get connected with? Who can I build great relationships with in terms of money? Who can I be generous to and bring up with me? There's so much more richness to be had here than let's talk about a savings account or like that 401(k) that got cashed out. I feel like that's table stakes. So I know your vision for what's possible. I'd like for us to start there. That's the North Star of where we want to go. I'm going to pull up your CSP and I'm going to ask for your help to make some changes. Are you ready for this?

Yeah.

All right. I'm ready. All right. So here's your CSP. As a refresher, we have $1,033,000 total net worth, credit card debt of $10,500, and then you've got your house mortgage of $310,000. Your fixed costs are at 46%, quite low. Investments are at 0% post-tax, 10% pre-tax, and your savings are at roughly 8% split among vacations, gifts, emergency fund, and 529. And then you got 46% going to guilt-free spending. Typically I recommend 20% to 35%. Before we make line item changes, any big picture observations that either of you want to make?

Yeah, I think guilt-free spending is what has to change. That'd be the first thing I would attack.

All right. Shall we dig into guilt-free spending? Sounds good. What's happening there?

We went out to dinner. That was $200. Grocery store was $200. Gas was $60. School lunch fees was $200. I paid for our hotel that we're going to in October. That was $300. Restaurant, haircut, restaurant.

What's the time period of all of those things you just shared? Is it like 2 weeks? Yeah. What do you notice about all this stuff?

It's a lot of eating out and then just runs to the grocery store.

How many times a week? Oh gosh. 3 to 4.

Why? Because we're not very organized. I think Ryan and I both have a touch of attention deficit and we are not good about sitting down. Like for 2 weeks we'll be really good about Sunday. We're going to cook all this stuff and be really prepared. And then it's just. Falls out and we need to just be much more structured. And this is what we're buying this week, this is what we're having this week, and sticking to the plan.

What do you think it would take in order for you to both be better at that? And the answer cannot be, we just need to try harder.

We used to do like that thing where they just deliver you your food that comes in all the meals and you just cook those meals. I think that probably actually did save us money because it was there, we didn't want to waste it, so we would make sure we actually did it.

Okay, that's one way. What else? Let's go one-on-one.

Ryan?

I don't know. Ryan, you look like you're in pretty good shape. Do you go to the gym? Yes. How often?

3, 4 days a week.

Huh? That seems like a lot. How do you go to the gym 4 times a week?

Break it down for me. Motivation, routine, and I guess desire. I just have that desire to do it, and I know what the outcome's gonna be if I do. Which is? Being in shape, feeling better about myself.

Great.

Yeah. And do you go to the gym at the same time?

Yes, absolutely.

In the mornings, same time. You have your clothes, you have enough gym clothes to go to the gym. You don't have to run the wash right before you go.

No. Hmm. Got them ready.

Do you see how much invisible work has gone into you succeeding in your health? You have enough clothes, you know where the gym is, you have a membership, you go at the same time. Now, if we think about how you both applied the money, work, when you would sit down and do your plans and talk about money, would you do it at the exact same time every single week? No, it was just like the last thing to happen, right? Whenever, probably when people are tired. When you show up, no one has prepared anything. When you go to the gym, you have a freaking split you're working off of. It's just completely different. But the thing is, both of you have been successful in life, so you know what it takes to be successful, whether it's at the gym Whether it's with kids, whether it's with medical school or showing up at work on time, why do you think you haven't yet applied it to money?

I think it's mental load. I'm overwhelmed with my job, parent, spouse. Like I just, my mental load is so overdone that trying to plan meals for an entire week just sounds like one more thing that I have to do the way it needs to be done.

I think that's a pretty honest answer. All right. I can appreciate that. And Ryan, what about you?

I think there's something holding me back in taking that role and trying to make that happen. Which is? I think, what if we're not successful? What if things don't pan out the way we want them to? I think that there's fear there, right? And Jamie not trusting what I'm doing. It's just, will she ever get there? And then if not, how much effort do I want to put into this?

Why does it have to be on her? You're the one who quit the job twice.

Yeah, it shouldn't be. I think I'm just so used to going into attack mode like that, being like, all right, yeah, it's on her, but it shouldn't be. I think I've just never done that. I've just never taken those steps. So this finding out how to start is the first thing I can do.

I agree. I think that some of your reluctance, Ryan, is in part due because you don't really have to. Jamie's making a bunch of money. She's picking up a bunch of the mental load on this anyway. You have made some financial impulsive decisions and nothing really happened consequentially. Here you are, you're still here. You got a new job. Roof is still there. So until the two of you see a more powerful vision for what you both want, something that you both have to work towards that you cannot do alone, then you will both stay at the ground level. In a boxing ring, just attacking each other because it's comfortable. It allows you to both feel a bit righteous and the way you've actually created this dynamic, it actually allows you to both go out and buy whatever you want. He's gonna do it, so I'll do it, and she's gonna do it, so I'll do it. So actually you've turned something that's quite dysfunctional into something that is, in your own mind, permissive for you. Do you see how perverse the knot that you have created is? Yeah. Yeah.

I don't like it.

I don't. Neither do I. Yeah. It's not teamwork. Teamwork is, hey, it's not you, it's not me. We're not bad people. We gotta come clear on what is our vision. The vision's gotta be powerful and specific. It's gotta be true. Do we actually believe it? And then we have to apply some of the skills that we have used for our professional life and our personal life. We know we can be successful and we have to apply it back to our money. Now there's some things we need to put out on the table. I'm really tired. I have work. I take care of my mom. I do this. And I am scared because I've never done this before, so I think I'm gonna get it wrong. Okay, let's put it out on the table. Let's agree. First of all, we need to give each other some grace. We know that there's gonna be mistakes made. Okay, fine. Second, there are things that I'm better at. Let me help. But there are things that I need you to pick up on as well. That's how we start to have these team dynamics. Jamie, you mentioned something that really got my antenna going up. You said, I don't have time. It's like a lot of emotional burden, a lot of load that I'm carrying. When I hear somebody who makes a lot of money saying that, in my head it's like a lottery slot machine just won. You know why? Because I'm like, have you ever heard of buying back your time?

Yeah.

You ever do it?

Uh, I have with my new AI, uh, note-taking through my work.

All right. That's a good example. Saves you a ton of time. Good quality. Can we do anything like that at home?

We've definitely had like someone clean the house for me. And took care of all that for us. So that was awesome. We've never had someone make food like that, but certainly that would keep us eating at home and not spending all that money going out and doing that.

Yeah. I think there are a lot of things. It sounds like you have some ideas. Great. What I want to do is I want to put the numbers back up on screen and I want us to talk about how we use the money to get to part of your vision. So again, 46% on fixed costs. You don't need to touch your fixed costs if you're below 50%, we don't need to bother with this at all. Move on. Okay.

Investments.

Hmm. We'll get to that in a minute. Savings. You told me savings is a big problem. Yeah. You're currently saving $1,430 and a lot of it is going towards non-emergency fund. Can we change this? Oh yeah. How much?

Uh, yeah, I'd say $1,000.

$1,000 bucks. Um, no, y'all make way too much money to only be putting $1,000 a month. It's ridiculous. You're taking home $18,475 a month. Jamie, you told me, I feel stressed out that we don't have enough in savings. I want you to recognize that if you want to play small, then you will play small for the rest of your life.

Yeah, we don't want to do that.

If you want to play big, you all talk about traveling and doing all this cool stuff, then play big.

If you're asking me, I'd say 5, I'd start with $5,000.

Per month. Jamie, what do you say about that number?

Would it be better to build all that up before putting it into retirement?

Now you're asking a very good question. What is a better priority, to invest or to save?

For short-term, having the savings would make sense because in an emergency situation you would need that first.

Yeah, it'd be liquid funds. If we needed it, we could get it. And then if we hit our goal, then we could invest.

Correct. That's a good way to think about it. The next question you need to ask is, do we have enough currently for the investment track that we're on? So if we take a look at your investments, if you retire at age 60, Jamie, which is earlier than many, I calculated it with a 3.5% withdrawal rate. You'd have about $87,000 or $88,000 a year in safe income. What do you think of that number?

Does it seem like it'd be enough?

It's not enough relative to how much you earn right now, cuz you all earn $260 and you're like, where's the money? So you probably need some more. Yeah. You have options. Those options could be, instead of putting, let's just say $5,000 a month into savings, you could put $4,500 a month into savings and $500 into investments. Right. You can split it in some way.

Yeah.

You could sell the house at a certain point and invest. And that could happen in a few years. You could sell the car, invest that. Great. There's lots of different ways to do it. And actually, you actually have more than enough money left over. You could do $5,000 towards savings and put money into your investments. So these are the data points we need to understand when we say, is saving or investing important enough? Okay. So let's go back to the CSP and then let's talk about some options. So when we take money and put it into the emergency fund here, it is going to draw from your guilt-free spending.

Okay.

This is like whatever's left ends up in your guilt-free spending. And there's a reason for that because everything else is the most important, right? You being able to cover your bills, keep the lights on. That's important. Your investments are extremely important. They're paying your future self. Savings are important. And then whatever's left is guilt-free. That's why the CSP is set up the way it is. Okay. So can I just show you like what happens if we put $3,000 a month here? You want to see?

Yeah, let's see it.

Watch what happens over here. 43% guilt-free spending. It's now at 32%. Guys, that's still like really high. Yeah. You still got a lot of money left over. Let's have some fun. Let's play around. Let's put $1,000 into retirement post-tax. All right.

Watch.

You're still at 27%. You got a lot of money left over right now. If we look at $3,000 a year, that's $36,000 a year. By the end of the year, you have. About $50,000. That's 12 months from now. What else do you want to do? Should we be putting more money in retirement or should we be allocating it elsewhere?

I would say stocks.

I think I just don't know anything about stocks. I don't even think I knew until the last year that stocks were different from a retirement account. I think I just thought all that was part of one thing.

Jamie, you know the reputation doctors have with money, right?

I do.

It's okay if you don't understand investing details. That's okay.

Yeah.

I don't mind, but a couple making roughly $300,000 a year needs to learn it. Yeah. And you have plenty of resources. And if it is my book, other books, audiobooks, programs, whatever, it has to be a commitment because it's not really about the money. I can tell neither of you want to become financial experts. That's fine. I don't expect the average person to want to. Fine. But If you want to be able to retire at 60, if you want to be able to travel, as the two of you have said, and all these things. Until now, it's been like, let's close our eyes and hope, and let's just go on vacation and we'll cover it with the bonus. Okay. You got by doing that, but what a shame if you go the next 20 years and you're still agonizing over getting $65,000 in your savings account. We could have knocked that out in 13 months. So there's gotta be a bigger life. And in order to get to that bigger life, which might contradict the way that you were raised, and yet nonetheless, you are here. Both of you are here. You're gonna have to learn some skills that maybe your families didn't teach you. That's what it takes. That's it. All right, back to the CSP. We're getting closer. Just to refresh your memory here, we're at 46% on fixed cost. We haven't touched that. Great. Which gives us a lot of extra margin to play with. And we can see that your savings are at 22%. That's a pretty nice healthy number there. I'd like to dig into that in a second. Your guilt-free spending's at 27%, still on the higher end, frankly. And I don't mind if yours is a little high, but I get the sense that maybe we could take a few percentage points from freaking guilt-free spending, $5,000 a month, and put it somewhere else. I actually don't even think you really appreciate the $5,000 a month you have.

No.

Definitely not. No, let's get rid of this shit then.

Yeah. Can I put it more in my vacation?

Yes. Yes, you can. You want to take a better vacation? This is where you do it. Tell me.

So I would put, could I, let's see, like we could put $1,000 in the vacation fund.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. Great. Yeah. All right. So instead of $330, we're going up to $1,000. That's $12,000 a year for vacations. What's interesting is you probably already spent that much anyway. You just spent it and then reimbursed yourself. Let's not do that anymore. Let's plan proactively. That's great. Savings are at 26%. Hold on. Gifts for $250. Who are you giving gifts to?

The kids?

Yeah. All right, fine. $500 for their 529s. All right. That's cool. You can do it. You can afford it. No problem at all. Hell, why don't we take this down to 20% just for kicks?

Put the extra in the stock column.

Yeah, exactly. Let's take it up to $1,500 a month. Plus the $1,800 a month, that's $3,310 a month being invested. So you are now investing, no joke, $39,720 a year. That's incredible. Incredible. And what I want to point out is that even with that money being invested, you still have $3,770 to spend every month. On guilt-free spending. This is not vacations. This is like eating out. This would be something like hiring somebody to come over and do your vegetables, chop them up, prep everything, put it in canisters, whatever. It could be somebody going and doing grocery shopping for you, babysitter, whatever you need. Yeah, that is a lot of money. Am I the only one amazed here?

No, didn't feel like we had that, and I'm just, I'm in shock.

It's like having a big junk drawer in your kitchen just full of shit, and then a personal organizer comes over and helps you clean it, and then you realize, oh my God, we actually have a ton of storage space. I still can store all the Ziploc bags that I want to. That's how it is with money. Okay? So instead of your junk drawer and just feeling like it was depleted, you actually have buckets for everything. But there are a few catches. What do you think the catches are?

We have to stick with it.

Yes.

We have to work as a team.

Yes.

Keep going. Spend it and then be like, oh yeah, by the way, I just spent this. We need to sit down every week and be more organized and intentional about what we're doing.

Yes. Keep going. This is great. You're nailing it.

What else? Be more, more proactive, have control over what we have been spending on. Not just be spending on things we don't need.

So you can spend $3,770 a month approximately on guilt-free spending, but it's gotta be mindful. There's gotta be a reason. The reason can be as simple as I want it. That's okay. I want to get this facial, this massage, these shoes, whatever, but it's gotta be part of the plan. And the thing is, y'all know how to do that cuz you've done it in other parts of life. So I think there's some infrastructure work to do as well. The infrastructure of this would be setting a time for the two of you to talk about it. So the next step is probably in the first few meetings, we're gonna read a book together. We're each gonna take a turn, one chapter me, one chapter you. We're gonna share ownership. It's not gonna be one person. And then when there are things we don't know, like what's this stock ownership thing at work, we're gonna look it up. And if we don't know what that is, we're gonna talk to HR or whoever it is. Boom. We're gonna learn this stuff just like we learn everything else in our life. The other infrastructure thing is that your accounts probably need to be combined. You're married, you got 3 kids. His and hers is like way too confusing. It's crazy. So in my suggestion, which you will read in the Money for Couples book, you'll see an account setup. I'll give it to you right now. In general, this is the simplest way to do is everybody's money goes into one joint account, one joint checking account. From there, each of you should get some individual guilt-free spending money each month. Out of the $3,770, what you might do is you might do 10% for us and 5% for each of us individually. All right. That's just a suggestion. The point is now you start to have some rules. So joint guilt-free spending includes things like family dinners, et cetera, et cetera. Individual guilt-free spending is like You wanna get coffee on your own, you wanna get some, I don't know, self-care, whatever, that's yours. As long as you're hitting your numbers and you're not exceeding it, no questions asked. But you should report to each other, hey, I'm within my numbers. Great. That's it. That's it. And then you have total freedom. Some people go, you know what, I'm gonna save this cuz I'm gonna take a girls trip or a guys trip like 12 months from now. Others are like, fuck it, I'm spending everything right now cuz I love it. Don't care. It's your money. And then you can always readjust it every 6 to 12 months. Totally up to you. How's that strike you, Ryan?

Yeah, it sounds great. I'm totally on board. I think that's something we should have been doing a long time ago, and it's hard to look back and think how much time has passed in not doing that. So I'm ready.

Okay, good. That's great. Perfect. And I love that acknowledgement too. It's in a way you can almost start to feel bad about what you haven't been doing right for so long. I felt that same way when I learned how, like, nutrition worked. And I was like, oh my God, why did I not learn this 30 years ago? But you can't. The only thing you can do is, like, nail it today going forward. So let's just do that.

Yeah.

The house. Let's just talk about this for a second. Do you both feel comfortable keeping the house for a few years and then selling it like 3, 4, 5 years from now?

I feel comfortable doing that. I think Gosh, we've been in here since 2014. So a few more years, we can make that happen.

Okay.

Jamie? Yeah. Yeah. Ryan has this vision of him and I making a house for ourselves together. And I think that makes total sense that we can wait a few years and move on.

Yeah. Okay. That'd be great. By that time you'll have far more in savings, far more invested. I do realize that we neglected one thing on your CSP. Did anybody realize something we forgot? That's very important.

Oh yeah. The debt, the credit card debt, for sure.

I don't think it'll take us that long to pay that off if we're intentional about it.

Hmm. Let's just be intentional like right now. The way I look at it is if I got credit card debt, I'm not freaking eating out, taking vacations, none of it. My credit card debt comes number one, cuz I want that shit off my back. So if it's me, I'm taking all the money going towards vacations, which is $1,000 a month. I'm taking some of the money from guilt-free spending. And it's all going to the credit card debt. Pay that stuff off. In a way, I am teaching myself a lesson like, damn, we can't take a vacation for X extra months because we got ourselves into this debt. So let's pay this shit off. We'll never get back there again. And as soon as we are done, we will take that $1,000 a month payment, put it right back into vacation. How do y'all feel about that?

I've said this to Jamie before. I'm—

that's exactly what we need to do. Ryan likes it. Okay.

Jamie.

Yeah. Okay. Any disagreements here? What's happening right now? Some weird energy in the room.

Um, I can sense a disagreement.

The disagreement comes because I feel like, and again, we're married, so it's our joint money, but I feel like that was his credit card debt and not my credit card debt. So I'm bitter that I have to pay it off.

Oh, Ryan, what do you think about Jamie's comment? You accumulated this credit card debt. I think you should take some responsibility for it. What do you say about that?

Yeah, I don't think she's wrong. I think that there's responsibility that I need to take to cover that. And at the same time, I also think that wasn't all spent on me. It was spent on things for the family too. Groceries were put on that credit card.

I don't know where all that money went and I didn't know he had— when he was not working, I didn't realize that that was being accumulated, I guess. I see. So I'm being petty. No, and I shouldn't be.

I don't think you're being petty. I think this is a very fair critique. Here's a guideline that I like to use in my own relationship, which is I want to be really generous with my wife, and I want her to be generous as well. And I've told her that. And in a relationship where you're talking about money, sometimes there is yours and mine. That's just natural. But if we both have a core value of I'm generous, you're generous, we're generous, then this conversation changes from Jamie saying, I know I'm being petty, but that's your debt and you should pay it off to something completely different. So play with me for just a second, Ryan. If you were really generous, how would you respond to Jamie's comment?

I'd say I'd put everything I had toward that credit card, pay it off as quick as possible. Despite how little that might be.

I like that. And then go that one extra step because that last line, but it may not be enough. So what would you like to say or ask about that?

I would like additional income to go toward it to pay it off faster.

Okay.

So ask her, Jamie, I would like some of your income to go toward that credit card to pay it off faster.

That makes the most sense.

Okay. Good job. You guys got there. Can I give you like some words that you might use for future conversations? Yeah. So I might say something like this. I might say, look, you know what? I'm playing Ryan right now. You know what, Jamie, you're right. Honestly, if I were in your position, I would be pretty frustrated because you make a lot of money. I know you work really hard. I also work hard and it is true. I ran up over $10,000 of credit card debt and in my head, I know some of it was for the family and for the yard, but the fact is like I shouldn't have run up credit card debt. That's just not the kind of relationship I want to have with money. So I would like to take my individual guilt-free spending money and I would like to put at least 90% of it towards the credit card debt and escalate the payments so that I'm putting extra money towards it every single month. I want to pay it off as quickly as possible. And the fact is, like, that's going to help a little bit. But I would also love if we could contribute using some of your income and pay this credit card debt off because I don't want us to have debt now or ever again. You see the difference in the way that I went about saying it? Yeah, a little bit more explanation, a lot of acknowledgment and validation, and also like asking, like, hey, you don't have to do it, I will pay this off, but I would love it. Why? Because I don't want us to be in debt now or ever again.

Yeah, agreed. Yeah. And, and I think that we could put that money toward what we talked about, right? The investments, the savings faster.

Nice. Once we pay it off, I have a plan of how we will move that money back into this and this.

Yeah. And we'll cut up the credit card and throw it in the trash.

There you go. Great. That's powerful. Look at this. I love this connection between the two of you. Yeah. Money actually should be fun. Even if you're talking about credit card debt, you can make it fun. All right. Hold on. Let's just fix this shit right now. Okay. Extra $150 a month is going towards credit card debt already. That's good. That makes a big dent, but obviously I'd like to put a lot of money towards that fucking thing. I want over $1,000 a month going towards it. So where are we going to find the $1,000 a month? What do y'all say?

Take it out of the vacation fund.

Take it out of vacation. Okay. Yeah. You want to put, take it fully out of vacation?

That'd be another $1,000.

Yeah. That's $1,000 right there. Or you can split it from something else. I mean, you guys could, I'd say guilt-free spending for sure.

Oh yeah. I can take some of my—

yeah.

I would, I almost wouldn't touch vacations yet.

Okay, cool. Jamie, you don't touch your individual guilt-free spending. You get your, you get what you're getting.

Okay.

Yeah. We're not touching your individual. You're keeping that because you didn't go into credit card debt, but the two of you are going to reduce that down. So instead of $3,620, we'll put $1,500 a month. You're going to knock this thing out fast. That's what I'm talking about. You can even go to our calculator. You can type Ramit calculators and you'll find a whole bunch of calculators where you can plug in your retirement amount, your debt calculator, and you can figure out exactly when you will be debt-free. Guys, $1,500 extra bucks a month once that debt is paid off. That was a lot of money.

Yeah. And I'll get my bonus next month and then we could probably just pay it all off.

You could do that. You could do that. I don't mind that. The only reason I say yes is that I hate you having to pay all this extra interest to the credit card companies. But from now on, I don't want this thing of we are taking a bonus and retroactively paying off bad decisions we made. No more. The bonus is used for going forward, shoring up our savings account, building up our investments, even taking some percentage of it and going towards guilt-free spending, just like it is, right? You just split it just like you split your income.

Yeah.

All right, cool. I feel like you guys are like on board.

I feel so much better. I feel, and we haven't even done anything yet other than go through this with you.

You have done something. The two of you acknowledging what has happened in the past, that's not easy. And then the two of you really grappling with where you are today. You've really had quite a complex, layered history. I can tell you that the difference in how our conversation has gone at the beginning of this call versus now is striking. Jamie, what do you notice about how you feel now versus at the beginning of our call?

I can tell you my heart rate is going down and I feel like I'm breathing less. Like I just feel like I could take a deep breath and feel like, oh wow, I feel this sense of relief. We've got this, we can do it. And that makes me really happy.

I love that. Ryan, how about for you?

Yeah, I feel less stress. I feel like this is more fun to talk about with Jamie. And then I also feel like this is going to open up freedom for both of us to really consider what that rich life can be. I think we had it in such a box because of what we were doing that now it just opens doors.

Yeah, I love that. Great observations. Just having a basic system where If you just do this, you win. Such a good feeling. Yeah. You don't have to wonder anymore, is this right? Is that right? Why is he or she doing that? No, just let's literally just follow these 4 numbers. If we just do that, we win. And now we can tweak things. It's like having a great recipe, like this great recipe. If we just follow it, it's gonna create a great dish. Now we can play with the spice and the this and the that., but we just know that this is the baseline recipe and it's awesome. Yeah. I love that. Okay. What stood out to you most from today's conversation, Ryan?

I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was just the lack of teamwork that she and I have. We've really been playing a separate game here and as a result, it's putting us in a bad position.

Good.

Jamie? I think that I have looked at it differently as more two separate entities. And I think talking about it, coming together will make it easier. And I think I do feel more heard and more understood after spending these hours talking that he understands like maybe more where I was coming from.

I really liked that. It occurs to me that the two of you have been through a lot harder things together than redoing this conscious spending plan. And when things get hard with money and they will, you can always look back and say, look, we've been through many other things. We can nail this. Because I know the two of you have, I would encourage you to find some money and put it towards therapy. I think it's actually foundational for being able to connect over this stuff. And like right now, seeing the way that you went from disconnected to connected, to me, that's just like great evidence. If I'm you, I want to give myself every advantage. I, I grew up frugal as well. And one of the things that I learned that I am desperate to teach people is I fell in love with spending money to improve my life. It's not something I do begrudgingly. I actually love it. I love paying for services. I even love paying my taxes. They improve my life. I love it. And so I want the same for you because I have a sense that both of you grew up almost as if spending is bad and saving is good, and also spending money meaningfully is incredibly amazing. So to be able to do that, whether it be with therapy, meal prep, shopping, childcare, whatever, the two of you doing that together will be like, wow, we are really using our money for our rich life. We're gonna get to their follow-ups in just a moment, but first I want to acknowledge how far Jamie and Ryan have come in one conversation. At the start, Jamie called them adversaries. They were keeping score. They were resentful. You spent that, fine, I'll spend this. But by the end, you could see that they were actually building on each other's ideas. Hey, let's save more. Let's move money from here to there. That is the kind of momentum I am always looking for when I speak to a couple. It's a very advanced sign of a team that is finally working together. They're actually building on each other. These are two people who are already successful in other parts of their lives, and when you've already proven that you can be great at something, That skillset is often transferable. Candidly, in my own experience, the best leaders are often the best partners and the best parents and the best planners. The skills are transferable. So if you want to get better at money, think about another part of your life where you were already great. Now, will they follow through? I hope so. I really do. Because no matter how many couples I talk to, I can't predict the outcome. Some couples do. Some couples don't. Some couples I never hear from again, but I saw something in them and I really hope they make that change. Let's check out their follow-ups now.

You'd ask what the most surprising thing that we learned from being on the podcast, and I would say that was probably just how much we actually should be having to work with that we are currently not working with. And, um, when I look at those numbers, it's evident that we weren't paying close enough attention to what we could and should be doing. So one of the takeaways obviously is that we need to work together as a team and make sure that we are sharing with each other what's going on in our— not just looking at the numbers themselves, but our thoughts and feelings about what we are doing so that we can always stay on the same page. We did have our first money meeting this week and just talked about things that were coming up and what we were going to have to to pay for and budget for. So that was part of our talk. And we read more into the book. And I think another takeaway that we got very quickly into reading the book was just that we really are thinking too small and we need to expand our thought process. And it was a lot harder to come down with details on that plan of the What's Your Future— What's Your Rich Life plan than I realized was we were thinking too basically and we really needed—

we really could think a lot bigger than we were.

Biggest surprise to me was really the amount being spent on guilt-free spending. I think that between the both of us not tracking it, not having that conversation frequently around money and what we're really— our plan is with it, it just kind of got away and really put us in the position of feeling like we didn't have any sort of money to spend. Some of the biggest takeaways too are just the importance of working together as a team, and sometimes you do need somebody just like Ramit to to kind of put you in check and tell you, "Look, you're doing silly things and you need to do better." I really need to consider what I want our future to look like and consider what our rich life is together. That's certainly something that I think a lot of people don't consider or get specific about. And if you want to ever reach those dreams or have a dream in general, you need to think about it and plan it and consider what it looks like for you. And your significant other?

So far, we have done a great job of putting a lot more money towards our debt and we should have that paid off by the beginning of the year on the path that we're on now. We've also been meeting once a week and kind of going over where our money's going and really trying to pay more attention to what we're spending and be more intentional. We've also listened to your audiobook on the way of a road trip and we've got about halfway through that and that's been really helpful too and opening conversations about money and what we've been doing. I think that it's going to take time to break our old habits. I think I learned that for me, vacation is more for my mental health, and that, um, getting away from here sometimes feels like the only way to really take a break from, from my job. And I have to find other ways to cope with that that are less expensive, I suppose. So next step is to get all the bank accounts combined and move everything all into one big account. And then just keep going for the future.

It's been about 6 weeks now, and I think things are going in the right direction. Jamie and I have really taken strides to meet and talk about money on a weekly basis, at least once a week. So for example, you know, we might be talking about that there's a bill coming up for one of the kids' sports and making sure that we apply that into the budget, especially when it comes to eating out. We just ate out so much that we didn't really even know where that money was going. I think now especially is a reality check to us that we were spending so much on just food. So we've cut that down quite a bit. And then also with my credit card debt, we've been putting my full paycheck toward that credit card debt. We were about, about $11,000, close to that. Again, about 6 weeks out, we're down to $7,600. Which is great because I think as we go into the next year, early next year, we'll have that paid off and then we can start to allocate and focus those funds somewhere else versus just putting in our things on a credit card and having to pay that off with interest. So I feel really good about it and I think that we're on the right track and we're going to continue it.

If you want my help with your specific money questions, you can apply to be on this podcast at iwt.com/apply. Or you can become a member of my money coaching program instantly at iwt.com/moneycoaching. In money coaching, you get access to monthly calls where I answer your questions directly on a private call, and I get the chance to go much deeper on the concepts of money that have made a huge change in my life. Plus, you'll get access to a community of other people like you who will inspire inspire you and push you to live your rich life. Check out money coaching at iwt.com/moneycoaching.