“I spent $5K behind his back. It changed everything.”

You trust each other when it comes to money?

Not completely.

When was an example where you lost financial trust?

She was like, I got to tell you something, and then she's like, I spent $5,000 on this coaching program. That for me was like, whoa.

How did you feel?

Just like the floor dropped out, like it hurt really bad.

The next morning I had an extreme panic attack and I thought that I was going to die in my sleep because I had made that decision.

Like, I know that this Like, tracking system is archaic and doesn't work.

You're at least not counting 20% of the stuff you're spending, which is why your savings account's dwindling, which is why you're going to be in a real financial problem in a matter of months.

God was very much like, this is not what I have for you. We saw the miracles that happened to bring us out of that, that it's almost like, oh, it's okay if we're in debt.

Hope is not a financial strategy. God is not a financial strategy. We need to make a plan. Alex and Jackie live in North Dakota.

He's 34, she's 33, and they are raising 4 children under the age of 8. Let's take a second to just acknowledge how amazing it is that they could find a few hours to spend with me today. In his application, Alex said this about Jackie. In 2024, she took us $15,000 into debt for a photography business course so we could make more money. It took 9 months and a lot of miracles to pay it off. And I've had a lot of trouble trusting her financially after that. Now, there are layers here. Today you're gonna hear how their faith shapes their money decisions, sometimes as guidance, but other times as a crutch to avoid responsibility. And before we dive in, I wanna hear from you in the comments. When was a time you lost trust with your partner over money? What happened? And did you ever get it back? Today, the question is whether they can stop repeating the same cycle and finally build a plan that they will both follow. I'm about to open Alex and Jackie's conscious spending plan, which breaks down their net worth, income, and where they spend their money. You can download and create your own CSP for free at iwt.com/csp. Assets, $300,000. Investments, $98,000. Savings, $16,000. Debt $224,000, which leaves them with a net worth of $189,000. Their gross income is $91,000. But here's the real problem. Their fixed costs are 87%. That means that almost every dollar they earn is already spoken for before they ever get to savings, investment, or guilt-free spending. And with 4 young children, that is a very dangerous place to be. Can these two learn to trust each other and pull themselves out of this financial hole? Let's get into it right now. When I help people think about their rich lives, the main thing I often say is get more specific. People say, I want to 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.

Alex, in your application, you wrote something that really caught my eye. You wrote constant bickering about spending.

Yeah.

I track everything meticulously, but we still overspend and I blame Jackie. What's going on there?

I'm able to track things and meticulously organize things and have a lot of trouble with what to do with that. And leading in a, I guess, yeah, I guess like leading in a way that makes us both on the same team instead of me putting myself in this role where I feel like I have to be like a taskmaster or in charge or something.

I see. And what does it feel like to you to be in that role?

It feels like I'm a farmer running after like 20 chickens and nothing, nothing works. And it just feels like loud chaos.

Who are the chickens in this example?

Well, I guess Jackie.

And in what ways, taking the metaphor and extending it, does it feel like you are chasing after her?

Yeah, I feel like I want and need reassurance of, hey, I'm committed to living within the means that we have right now. And I'm aware of where we're at each month, and I care about that, and I'm taking that into account as I make purchases.

Do you feel you have that reassurance or no?

Most of the time, no. Sometimes, yes. Okay.

Jackie, um, curious what your reaction to that is.

I feel sad because, like, there is some element here where I do feel like he is in control and not in the bad way. It's just, I've managed my money in a way that it's like, you know, oh, Alex is the tracker. Alex is in charge. Alex is the one, you know, and I forget to text him sometimes, a lot of the times. And now we're at the point where we're not even texting.

What is texting? What does that have to do? Texting means what?

Yeah. So that's how we track our budget. So whenever we spend something, we text each other how much we spent. So if we're at the grocery store, We just checked out. It's like, okay, I spent $200 at the grocery store and we send it off.

What?

And because—

wait a minute. Hold on. What? Am I in the Stone Age right now? Can you just pull up your phone? I just wanna see like, what do the texts say? I know you, you haven't done it in a while. That's fine. Just go back to the last time you did. I wanna see what some of them say. Okay. I live for this.

All right.

What do you got, Jackie?

Uh, $40 groceries, $307 groceries. $26 groceries, $21 Angelic Gardens, $162 Target groceries, $125 like BIRD curriculum for homeschool.

BIRD?

What?

Oh, you homeschool your kids? Yes. Okay. And you bought a curriculum for how much?

Um, $115.

Okay. I notice you're avoiding eye contact as you say that. All right. How often do the two of you talk about money? And we can include these texts, but also talking.

Via the texts, I mean, almost daily. And then talking about it, gosh, I'd love to hear your perspective too, Jackie, but I think it's, I think it's like, it was almost every day, some sort of comment or something almost every day. Yeah. And then, but like in terms of an actual sit-down full conversation about it, we were meeting weekly to talk about budget, vision for the family, homeschool, all the things every Friday. But then some of the kids would go down late and we wouldn't do that.

So that's impressive though. How long were those meetings that you used to have every Friday?

Uh, an hour to an hour and a half. And we weren't just talking money, we were talking beyond that, but money was a piece of it.

It was big vision. Yeah.

Cool. Wow. That sounds great. Honestly, very rare and extremely impressive. Do you trust each other when it comes to money?

Not completely.

No. Jackie?

I trust that he is not going to spend anything. So yeah, I mean, yeah.

I have a follow-up to that. Does not spending anything make you good at money?

No, no, it's horrible. No, I'm like, no. Um, but I think that's what I can count on him for. I can count on him not to spend money.

Jackie, what can he count on you for?

Um, to always, to either not, not know what the budget is like, um, to overspend and to, yeah, not communicate about money. Hmm.

Okay. That's pretty interesting. Alex, would you say that that is why you applied to speak to me today?

Uh, yeah, definitely part of it. I definitely know that I've created an environment, like I know that this like tracking system is archaic and doesn't work.

Right.

That's why we stopped using it this month, especially after filling out the conscious spending plan. It was very clear, like, what, why have I been wasting all this time? So everything that Jackie just said is part of it, but also I know that I'm 100% responsible and complicit in creating that environment in which she felt like that. Like if I was having kinder, gentler conversations with her, I'm sure it would have went differently. And so I just want to be able to be more compassionate about it and more responsible.

With the old system where Jackie, you would occasionally text the expenses that you had incurred, like groceries, et cetera, you would text Alex, and then what would happen next?

He, he would put them on our budget. He always updated the budget, especially before meetings.

If we were to have a meeting, Alex, would you, how, how often would you edit the budget?

3 or 4 times a week.

3 or 4 times a week. And how long would you say you spent per week on that budget?

Probably like an hour a week. Yeah.

Hour a week. And how long have you maintained that budget for?

Yeah, since 2016.

Wow.

Almost 10 years.

Yeah.

Do you have it? Can I look at it?

Yeah.

Oh, throw it up.

Yeah.

Love a good budget.

Okay.

Whoa. Oh, let me just describe what I see. Okay. This just popped up on my screen. I got to look. So first of all, I see a lot of numbers, a lot. I see all categories. There are from row 7, which is mortgage. Let's scroll down a bit. Tithe, Zoom. Zoom is a category, by the way, for $17, uh, $18 a month. I do see a lot of colors, so I see gray, red, and green. I can tell that some of them are just standard automated, like Spotify doesn't change. Gym membership appears to be pretty much the same, but then we have these spiky ones which are in red and green, like groceries and gifts, which cycle red to green. Am I reading this right, Alex?

Absolutely. Yes.

All right. Are there any other sheets on this? I'm very suspicious. Where's the rest of this stuff on here?

Yeah. So there's that.

Oh God.

Oh, savings and investing is another row. And then there's like Scroll down. What is all this?

This is random stuff to remember. So like if this category says kids activities, Jackie's business, if any category was like really high, I put like the large purchases here to remember why, why it was like that.

This is crazy. All right, hold on. Before we go on, I just want to say I knew it. I knew that it looked too simple. I was like, a 10-year budget? This, this is like pretty simple.

Where's the rest?

And then we scroll down, there's all these weird notes. And what's on the right? I'm seeing some more numbers, sums.

So totals. And then, so then the goal was here's the budget of what we were trying to hit every month and did not hit ever. Oh, and so it was red if it didn't hit, fall within what we had thought it should. And green if it did.

I love tracking something for an entire decade that I never actually win at. Really motivates me.

It's the worst.

So what did you do differently after spending an hour a week for 520 weeks of this budget?

We would have conversations about things and try to make adjustments. So if groceries were really over, we would say, hey, how could we meal plan? To do something different next month, getting actual results from doing that was very hard for us.

Jackie, what's your take on this budget?

Yeah. Just to go back to what Alex said, even we meal planned in order to, you know, cope with the budget so that next month would be better. And the meal, it was higher. It was higher. We, our systems are broken.

The system you build is supposed to guide you. Not make you feel overwhelmed and lost. But that's exactly what happened here. I don't think Alex is trying to control Jackie. He's trying to control chaos through a spreadsheet. 10 years of budgets, over 500 hours, and they still feel like they're drowning. Do you see why I fucking hate budgets? How many people have come on this show totally overwhelmed by their financial situation, and yet they are meticulously tracking every freaking number? And I go, what's the point of this? And it's like they look up, they are visually startled. I don't know.

I'm not sure.

Why do you do it? I don't know. You do it because you crave control, and it's easier to control cell D46 than to actually zoom out and look at the real problem. And I am begging you, put your stupid fucking spreadsheets away. This is exactly why I created the conscious spending plan. Tracking. Every little tiny detail does nothing for you. It feels good. I got to say this. I'm going to get in trouble from a lot of workout people. I don't give a fuck. It's like people who go to these workout classes and they're like, oh, I feel so good. I'm sweating. Okay, you might be sweating. I could make you sweat right now, put you in a freaking airport at 72 degrees and walk around with your heavy backpack. You're sweating. That doesn't mean it's a good workout. It's the same thing with the way you manage your money. Just because you're tracking 5,000 numbers does not mean you're actually getting ahead. You might feel like you are, but I'm less interested in your feelings sometimes and more interested in objective progress. Hold on, now I'm sweating. Oh, such a good workout, everybody. Ramit Sethi sweating in his office. It's not a fucking workout. Budgeting is backwards looking. Here's what you spent on Brussels sprouts. Look into my eyes. I do not care. The CSP says, here's what we care about. Here is where our next $100 is going to be allocated. If your system is just making you anxious and guilty and resentful, it's probably time to change the system. Now, I want to hear about why this behavior even started in the first place. When I started IWT, it was just me working out of a dorm room. Now we have many employees. We work with contractors, some of whom are outside of the United States. And it's not as simple as when it was just me., but it has been essential to grow my business, to be able to grow my team with it. Now, I did not let HR paperwork bog me down when I got started. I hired somebody to help with that, and you can do the same by working with Gusto. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, it's remote-friendly, and it's incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. They offer automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, workers' comp, 401(k) matches, you name it, they can help. Plus, it's quick and easy to switch to Gusto. Just transfer your existing data and get up and running fast with no hidden fees and no surprises. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/Ramit and get 3 months free when you run your first payroll. That's 3 months of free payroll at gusto.com/ramitsethi. Once more, gusto.com/ramitsethi. Well, I recently saw this comment on YouTube that said, I doubt Ramit is really sleeping on a Leesa mattress.

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How long have the two of you been married?

It'll be 11 years in a couple days. Cool.

Congrats. That's awesome. So before kids, did you like text each other expenses?

No. So we didn't do that. I don't even know what— do you remember, Jackie, when we started that? That was the last couple years, I think.

I didn't know how much money— I've never known, like, I don't, I don't think I knew how much money we had in our budget during that time.

You didn't talk about money, uh, in the beginning?

Not back then.

No. Okay. What was the first time you substantively talked about family finances?

The first time I remember was— so let's see, we got married in 2014. 2015, we— I quit my job and I was the sole provider, and We, from a financial standpoint, and we were a couple hundred dollars away from running out of money completely. And I was looking at our account on my phone and we were in bed and I turned over to Jackie and said, our rent's due in, I don't remember, 15 days. We have $300. What are we going to do? And she looked at me and she laughed and said, well, there's nothing we can do except for go apply for jobs and go make some money. And the next day she applied for a bunch of jobs and got 5 job offers and then got a job at a coffee shop and started making money like that week.

Wow.

What do you make of that, Alex? What do you make of Jackie's response and her reaction?

She just doesn't have the, like, stress that I have and the, like, need for control that I have. And I admire that freedom and secretly wish that I could be like that, but I also don't see how if both of us were like that, how it would work.

Hmm.

What about you, Jackie? Hearing that story, reflecting back, what do you notice about your reaction?

I haven't been a steward of my finances and like having goals are just like my goal and financial goals have just been kind of pie in the sky dreams and haven't been like intangible reality being able to be measured.

Okay. That's interesting. My reaction's a little different. Like, okay, I'm sure what you're saying, both of you, is true, but from that specific story, the fact that Alex, you were like, hey, we're running out of money. I don't know how we're going to pay rent. And Jackie's like, all right, well, we got to find a job. I'll go out. And then she goes out and gets one tomorrow. To me, that is a sign of somebody who's pretty resourceful, and I think especially when you're married, you want to know that you can count on your partner. They are going to step up and know what needs to be done and just do it. And to me, that is a great example of a resourceful partner. Absolutely.

I really admire that about her. And I'm really— that story actually makes me happy. Like, I feel really good hearing that story.

Like, yeah. Okay, Alex, when was an example where you lost financial trust in Jackie?

Yep. So a couple years ago, she had some dreams of like entrepreneurial dreams. And so she, uh, signed up for a coaching program for a third of our, what we had in savings. So it was $5,000 and signed up for that while I was at work. And then I came home, drove, pulled in the garage, got outta the car, and she was like, all right. I've gotta tell you something. And then she's like, I spent $5,000, I don't remember if it was $5,000 or $6,000 or something, on this coaching program, you know? And I don't remember what you said after that, but that, that for me was like, whoa.

How did you feel when you heard that?

Yeah, just like the floor dropped out. Like, whoa. I, uh, I didn't know you could do that.

Like, uh, like I didn't know you could do that. That's cool or something else?

No, like betrayed. Yeah, betrayed. Like basically. Wow. Like it hurt really bad.

Yeah. Did you ever use that word and tell Jackie that before now?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, I think I got, yeah, I definitely got that. The next morning I had an extreme panic attack and I thought that I was gonna die in my sleep because I had made that decision. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. What happened next?

And I was upset and emotionally affected by that. For a while, for months, I think.

Did you ever ask her to cancel the coaching program? Yeah, I did. What happened?

She said she couldn't.

I said no. I said I couldn't because I was so depressed. I was, you know, we had had 3 children at the time. We lived far away from, around the middle of nowhere. You know, my, all my friends were really new, but I just felt so depressed, so without direction. So not able to function as a human being, and I needed someone who was outside of it all to give me just a broader perspective.

So when you told him, I can't cancel it, were you saying, I can't cancel it because I need this coaching program right now, or I can't cancel it because it's literally not cancelable?

I can't cancel it because I need this right now.

Okay. Alex, did you understand that at the time?

No, I thought it was not cancelable as in like they, no refunds, can't cancel it.

Did you just learn that just now?

That was the clearest I've ever heard it said. And I don't, I actually don't think she's wrong about that. Like it ended up being a really good thing for us because aside from the trust piece of it, it ended up being a good thing for us because we had to have more conversations that were hard. And I think that was a good thing.

I don't think he knew at the time how, how he, you, yeah, you didn't know how deeply depressed I was. I don't even think I knew.

Mm-hmm. Did the coaching program work?

Yeah, it, it didn't work. Why? I mean, I signed up for it in order to, for our finances, but what I got was just that, like, Jesus loves me. I don't even know how to explain it, but like, My coach was more spiritual and it was exactly what I needed for the whole year.

What, what type of course, what type of coaching was it?

Uh, Tony Robbins coaching.

Okay.

So, and like when you say I originally signed up for our finances, what do you mean by that?

One of the goals that, you know, that they have you fill out on, on the intake form was what's your goal? And I was like, oh, I want to be able to make $40,000 this year. That way I can contribute to our family. Alex doesn't have to stress anymore, you know, about money. I don't have to stress anymore about money, and I can become a new person, you know.

Okay. Uh, that's interesting. And since then, just to stick on the earnings part of it, um, that was several years ago. Have you earned $40,000 a year?

No, no, I have not.

Okay.

I understand that programs and coaching can often work in unexpected ways. Like, I've had people join my Earnable Business program and then they realize, like, I actually don't want to start a business. I actually find that really valuable. Better to know that now, spend a few thousand bucks than to go down 2 years of heartache. But I also think you got to be able to afford these things. And you certainly have to be able to talk to a partner about a $5,000 purchase.

There are two key things here that I want to address. First, did you catch when Jackie said she was depressed? I really paid very close attention to that. We throw that word around a lot. I'm so depressed, but real depression is extremely serious. Jackie said she felt like she could not function, isolated, lost, and instead of talking about it, she signed up for a $5,000 coaching program., and then she told Alex after the money was gone. If you are listening and you felt like that, like you're drowning, directionless, like you have no energy to do anything, then I would highly encourage you to talk to a therapist. Get the support you need before the damage becomes even harder to undo. Now I want to talk about that $5,000 course. Jackie admits that she spent the money because she felt lost. However, she was able to do that because she and Alex did not have an agreed-upon number that either of them could spend without discussion. And it also feels like a little act of rebellion by Jackie too. Oh, you want me to text you every time I spend money? You need to have control? Well, take this. Nobody wants to live their entire life asking permission, especially not from their spouse. There is a simple fix here. Set up a clear spending threshold. If you are below that number at the end of the month, amazing. If you are above that number, well, First of all, don't get above it, but if you do, then it is your responsibility to bring it up and come up with a plan going forward. And if necessary, discuss why you might want to adjust that number overall. The point is you have to start somewhere more nuanced than simply spend as little as possible.

If I say the word money, how do both of you feel about it?

Jackie? In this moment, sad.

You feel sad about money.

How come? Because I don't have enough to give and live the life that I want to live. It's hard. It's not— it's a point of contention in me, and it's been a point of contention in me for, I mean, essentially since that time where I decided like I was going to try to like hustle and like You know, and just also being super dishonest about what I wanted to do. You know, it's like I wanted to— I mean, my dream job, right, is to be a songwriter. And, and, and yet when I put all of my energy into photography, it was not fulfilling at all.

Yeah. Yeah, I hear that. There's like there's a sorrow in looking at some of the choices that we made. Sometimes the results that they got us, sometimes that we made a choice out of fear instead of what we really wanted to do. I can understand why even bringing up the word money can make you instantly sad. Okay, Alex, how about you? When I say the word money, how do you feel?

Like dizzy. Dizzy and confused.

And conflicted.

I feel like I should want to make a ton more money or care about money a lot, but my emotions don't match that. Like my emotions feel kind of resigned.

Oh, resigned.

That's interesting.

I wouldn't have expected you to say that. I would've expected the opposite. I would've thought you would've said, I feel like I shouldn't care about money, but I actually do. Hmm. And I say that because your behavior of tracking money for a decade kind of communicates that. It's very hard for people to spend an hour a week for a long time on something they don't really care about. What do you make of that?

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm open to that for sure. It, it feels like that I liked the system though, and not the money piece of it that I like just fiddling around with. Like systems, if you can even call that a system.

It's a hobby.

Yeah.

I think I understand a bit. Let's take a look at the CSP. Jackie, I would like you to read the word in bold and then the full number next to it for this entire box, please. Okay.

We have assets, $300,000, investments, $98,358, savings, $16,000, and debt, $224,953. Total net worth is $189,405.

Okay.

What do you think about those numbers, Jackie?

There's regret tied into it. I still think there's a lot of regret tied into these numbers.

So that's how I feel. Okay.

What, what regret? Just, you know, our first decisions, like me not getting a job right away.

You feel like it could be more had you done that?

Yes.

Okay. All right. Alex, how do you feel about those numbers?

Uncertain. Just unsure of whether they're good, bad, what, like what, how it matters.

Yeah. You know, I really appreciate the honesty in your answers because I think what you both just told me is actually how pretty much 99% of Americans feel about their numbers. First of all, they don't even know what their net worth numbers are. These are 4 numbers: assets, investments, savings, and debt. You just add them all up, make sure you subtract the debt and you have your total net worth. The vast majority of people have never done this. So that's part one. Part two is, all right, what the hell does this mean? We need to turn money into meaning. Just seeing a number, whether it's negative $52,000, $189,000, or $1.8 million, what does it mean? We are not taught to think about that. And so we just sort of ignore it like the way Jackie did. You know, your first word was about regret. You kind of went back into this story. I'm like, let's talk about the numbers. But numbers are just numbers to us. They actually don't really change the way we feel unless we are trained on how to think and feel about them. Okay. All right. Let's keep going here. Let's talk about income.

Alex, can you give me the combined gross monthly income please?

Yes.

$7,664.

All right. So the household income, which I think is your income exclusively, right, Alex?

Okay.

At this point, yes.

$91,968 per year.

And then let's go down to big number on this fixed cost.

What's that number? 87%.

Uh, $4,951. All right. So 87% of your take-home pay is spent on fixed costs. That's it. That's the ballgame. When you're at 87%, I never even need to meet you. I can already tell you're stressed out about money. So let's take a look at the rest of the CSP and see how it plays out. Investments are at 2%. That's $90 a month in post-tax with a 401(k) contribution of $460 per month. All right. Savings at zero. And your savings amount in the bank is $16,000, which is a about 3 months of expenses, roughly. Okay. 3 months of fixed costs. And then finally down to guilt-free spending, we are at 11% or $651 a month. Is that number true?

It's not what we're spending, way more than that.

Exactly. Okay. That's what I thought. So then if we go back up, you're in debt. So I want to ask about the quality of that debt. What is this $224,000 in debt?

Break it down for me. Yep. Everything in that is the mortgage. Except for we owe $5,000 on our car.

Uh, on your credit card?

Uh, no. Uh, to a family member who loaned us money with no interest for the car. Oh, yep.

No credit card debt. Oh, so you hold on. You're telling me you spend way more than $651 a month. Where's the money come from?

Our savings. It just goes down every month.

Ah, you're drawing from your savings like each month? Yeah.

What did your savings used to be at, at the peak?

Uh, at the peak, right before we bought our house, we had $35,000 in there.

Mhm.

How long until you run out of savings?

Uh, right. I haven't calc— I haven't ran that calculation, but it would eventually—

yeah, a couple years. Maybe sooner. Yeah. Jackie, what do you think about this?

Um, I feel like my attitude is the same as that time. It's like, okay, well, let's go make money. You know, like, I'm like, okay, well, let's be resourceful. Okay, well, what are we doing? Like, that's why we're, that's why we're having meetings so that we can, you know, really get a bigger vision.

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rocketmoney.com/ramit. Right now you make $91,000 and you are spending more than you make every month. Let's say you made $150,000 a year. Would it change the financial dynamics that we see here? 100%.

Tell me how. We would have guilt-free spending with groceries. I feel like every month there's this expectation that it's less than, you know, $1,400 or $1,300, however much, you know, there's that threshold and it's just not like it really is just around that number each month. Okay. And, you know, so that wouldn't be that much, but then We would have the freedom to, you know, redo some of the parts of the house that really stress us out. And, you know, that like, I feel like everything would be organized in a, in a better way. And I feel like right now things are just disorganized because we have this mindset that we don't have enough money.

Wait a minute. I hold on. I asked if you make $150K, would it change? You were like, absolutely yes. I was like, how? And then you proceeded to tell me all the ways that you would spend more money. We would spend more on groceries. We would spend more on home renovations. And like, by the way, things would somehow be organized somehow, some way.

Isn't this the problem?

If they're not organized at 91, how are they going to magically be organized at 150?

Well, I guess we could set a higher savings budget, I guess.

Hmm. Let's take a look. Net income or take-home pay after taxes and pre-tax withdrawals, $5,692 a month. Your mortgage is $1,567. Your car payment is $370. Okay. Debt, zero. Kind of interesting though, even though you have $5,000 owed to family, you're not making payments on that, right?

Oh, I put that in the wrong category then. So $200 a month is going towards that. And then the— from that $370, so then $170 is gas. I wasn't sure where to put all that stuff.

All right. That's— let me just fix it. All right, fine. That's fine. Um, groceries at $1,550 a month.

Okay.

Clothes at $100, phone at $148, tithing at $569 a month, and subscriptions at $123 a month. What do y'all think about those fixed costs?

Grocery sticks out to me as being really high. We have 4 kids, but still it feels pretty high.

Okay. Jackie? I mean, groceries is as much as our mortgage.

Yeah, that's true. Groceries and your mortgage are the same. Yeah. What else? Like, if you just zoom out, how do you feel about this, the overall way that you are spending your fixed costs?

Well, I don't like the result. Keep going. Because of the tension that it's creating in our, in our marriage.

You had mentioned earlier, you know, we could save more. It's kind of unclear to me where you would get the money to save more.

Right. I think that's where it was like, oh, if we made $150K, we would have more to save for.

Yeah, I think that's probably true. You'd probably be able to save a little bit more, but my guess is you would end up spending just as much. Yeah. Do you have a list of things, Jackie, that you want to buy when you're financially able to? Yes.

What's on that list? Yeah, I think it would be just a lot more giving, like being able to Maybe even open up a storefront or like even, I mean, something small is like, you know, having the money to record music and yeah.

Alex, do you have a similar list?

Not, not really.

Um, yeah, not really. That's exactly what I suspected. Alex doesn't have a list because he doesn't dream. He's just a mechanic. He's a money mechanic, just turning the wrench. But it's an interesting, you know, some people are like, I want to be able to take this type of vacation. Didn't hear that from you, Jackie. I did hear, I want to be able to give more. That's interesting. And maybe I want to be able to spend some on my hobbies, um, songwriting, things like that. Interesting. What happens in the guilt-free spending? It says $600 and something, $651. What do y'all spend each month on discretionary purchases?

Curriculum, homeschool curriculum, kids' extracurricular activities, whether that's like homeschool PE or, you know, co-ops or music or swim lessons.

Is there a limit on how much you spend on for kids? No. No limit. But there's a limit on a lot of other stuff, huh?

Yeah. Oh, like, did we assign a limit? Yes, but it's arbitrary because we don't follow it.

That's okay.

That's common.

But just the idea of, like, can you imagine saying no to something for kids, something that they really want or that you think they really need?

For financial reasons?

I can.

Yeah.

Would you do it?

I would. You would?

Jackie, would you? Um, I mean, no, it's been, I think we've talked about, you know, music is a, is a very big expense and I don't know, Alex, where that falls. Um, where, where does that fall? Like in the budget?

Oh, like on our system?

Yeah.

On our system.

Kids activities. Throw that up, Alex. Let's just look at that for a second again. Yeah. Let's look at the single source of truth for the last 10 years. This will be good. Quite an interesting swing here. Uh, some months it's $1,000, other months it's $120. So if I had to guess, I'm guessing this is like an average of $600 a month just for kids' activities. All right.

Hold on.

Hold on a second. Miscellaneous. Holy shit. $398 in a month. $409, $978, $904.

What's miscellaneous? Honey, let's look at the footnotes.

Yeah, these are actually coming in useful even though I made fun of them for like 10 minutes straight.

Yeah. Oh, we bought a new couch, a used couch, garden stuff, hotel for all for kids activities.

Keep on the miscellaneous. What else are you all spending on miscellaneous? Kids' birthdays. Yeah, that's a good one. Homeschool curriculum, plants for the yard. Yep. Dodgers game, zoo membership.

Okay.

These are all like normal family expenses.

I get it.

But what I notice is there is no strategy. It's just random stuff. And, and when you're making, you know, a good income, $91,000, those things do add up. They really add up because we're not talking about one or two things. We're talking about like every month there's at least $1,000 of expenses that are not accounted for here. And you're net income, your take-home pay is $5,600 per month. You're at least not counting 20% of the stuff you're spending, which is why your savings account's dwindling, which is why you're going to be in a real financial problem in a matter of months.

Jackie? Oh no, I don't know. I, this, see, I don't like that this excites me. I don't like that this excites me. Why does this excite me? Because then I'm like, now we have to go do something. Whereas like, Alex, you know, I think that, you know, it's hard when I wanna make more money and you don't care about money, but I feel like I can't care about money, but I do care about money. But then I work at home and I'm like, I, you know, I stay at home. I don't work at home, I stay at home. But it's like, should I be working? And then it's like, well, I don't wanna work 'cause I wanna be with the kids. I don't know.

It's just so—

that was interesting. Sorry, sorry. I kind of went on a rant.

Does that happen a lot, this kind of spinning about money, or is it only now that we're looking at it?

Now that we're looking at it.

Alex, have you ever wanted Jackie to look at the budget that you kept? Yeah. Do you ask her to? Yes.

What'd she say? Sometimes she'll look at it and sometimes I can't even think about it, which is kind of sad. I actually don't even know. It doesn't, it hasn't resulted in us really looking at it closely.

Jackie, what'd you do when he asked you to look at it?

Um, the last time I was willing to download the, the app so that I can see how much money we have in our bank account before I spend.

Uh, like how much you have in your checking account, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So what did that tell you? Like it's $200 or $4,000? Like what does that tell you?

It says You know, whether or not I can spend XYZ on groceries. I mean, when I'm— if I'm out buying groceries.

But what if it says $200 in the checking account and you have like $500 of groceries? What are you going to do then?

Go put some back.

Can I tell you something? I understand the dynamic if you were poor. I understand that. Like when people are truly poor, they actually have to know how much they have in their checking account. And they are literally putting stuff back on the shelves because the money is just not there. Y'all make $91,000 a year. I don't think looking at your checking account to gather information about your financial situation is the right level you should be operating at. You actually have to be upleveling in the way you think about it. That's like thinking about net worth, thinking about investments, fixed costs, like It's as simple as what's on the sheet, but it's more complex than how much you have in your checking account. To put it another way, I would never allow myself to get to the point where I have to put a bag of cookies back onto the shelf. That needs to be sorted out months prior.

When I asked Alex and Jackie if making $150,000 would change everything, they said yes instantly. Yeah, nice fantasy.

That's not going to happen.

All of us believe that more income will magically solve our money problems.. But in reality, they would probably just scale up the same mistakes. More groceries, more hobbies, more stuff for the kids, more money, same problems. And they even know it. Jackie admits that she gets excited by a crisis because it forces her to act. Now, I used to feel like that when it came time to write an essay because it was due the next day in college. That's kind of funny when you're 20 years old. It's not so funny when you have children at home and you're talking about 80-something percent of your net income going to fixed costs. And she spins about whether she should work or stay home or just hide from money altogether. It's classic avoider behavior. And meanwhile, Alex has been attempting to engage over a spreadsheet for 10 years, a spreadsheet she won't even look at. You know, I talk about this in chapter 6 of Money for Couples, my new book. This is the chaser avoider dynamic. It is exactly as it sounds. One partner chases, the other avoids, and both of them end up exhausted, basically in exactly the same places where they started. If you're gonna spend time agonizing about money, worrying about money, stressing about money, my feeling is you might as well actually get some results. It's like those little annoying kids who sit there and they pretend to brush their teeth. They don't actually brush. I mean, you're standing in front of the freaking sink. You might as well just brush your dirty little teeth. Get that filthy plaque off it. I'm not going to name who, but I was taking care of some little kids. My limited experience with kids, I did not realize they lie about brushing their teeth.

So we're like, all right, go brush your teeth. They're like, yeah, I brushed my teeth. And then I was like, what's this antenna going up in the back of my head?

I was like, let me smell your breath. A phrase, by the way, that I have not uttered in about 35 years. I just had this intuitive feeling. So intuitive. I smelled that shit like it was from hell. I said, what the fuck? I forgot that kids lie about brushing their teeth. I sent them straight back in there. Go back in there. Don't come out for 10 minutes.

Every parent on this podcast, I really feel for you.

I truly do. Some disgusting shit happening in bathrooms across America. All right, now back to Alex and Jackie. The truth is, unless they break this cycle, they're going to be having the same fights 10 years from now.

I'm not going to allow that.

I want to find out where their relationships with money came from right after this break. 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, fucking 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/ramitsethi and get 10% off plus free shipping. That's 10% off and free shipping at trustandwill.com/ramit.

Alex, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were growing up?

Sure. We didn't talk about it a ton. I remember being told to never, like, if I've ever put anything on a credit card, to pay it off that same month and never carry credit card debt. I remember when I was 15, my first job was a busser and I made tips. So I put everything into my savings and I only spent tips. And so in my head, if I'm not saving everything, it's not enough. But that's not what my parents ever said that, but that was what I sort of picked up from that job because I did that when I was 15. And, um, what'd your parents do? My dad was in, uh, the insu— he worked for an insurance company and was in like sales management.

My mom was a kindergarten teacher. Okay. Got it. Got it. Were they religious? Yeah, they were. Okay. And you two are both religious, correct? I saw the tithing. Yeah. Cool. What'd they teach you about money besides save and pay off debt?

Yep. Always give 10%. Be faithful with that no matter what. And you'll— it will pay off. Okay. That was pretty much it. I mean, give if you can and help people out. They were really good about that.

And then after you graduated, you got a series of jobs.

Yeah.

What'd you do with the money?

At first we were saving a lot. Mm-hmm. And then we had two times where we, it went, it dwindled. The first time was because of quitting that job basically for mental health reasons, having no income for 6 months, blowing $16,000.

In 6 months. A lot of parallels. You had money, you saved it, you only spent the tip, and then something happened. After accumulating all this money, you spent it down. Then it happened again. Here we are again. It's at least the third time.

What do you make of that? Yeah, there— I don't know where it came from, but there must be something stuck in there about this is the, like, level of person I am, or some amount of worth Tied into that or like, yeah, I don't know. Like it's hard because I feel like I'm grateful for how much I make and how much we have. And I just, I want to steward it better. I don't know. It's all a tangled mess.

That's like as far as I got. Okay. All right. What about for you, Jackie? What do you remember your family saying about money when you were growing up?

A lot of it, you know, my mom being a single parent from in my elementary years, and it was like, we don't have the money, or, you know, we, we took, I think, one family vacation and it was like the most special time ever. But yeah, we just, we didn't have the money to do or to have the things that I, that I wanted. Even, you know, when my mom got remarried, it was the conversation was, you know, we're not going to buy those clothes. Those are too expensive or we're not going to, we're not going to do that. And yeah, but, but the focus, you know, but we spent money on other things like we ate out very regularly. So the money was there, just that our values were different.

All right.

So you get older, Jackie.

Did you go to college? Yes. Yeah. Alex and I met in college.

Oh, cool. Okay. How did you pay for college?

My parents paid for college. And well, the first quarter I paid for it. Because I had actually run away from home at that point. And so all the money that I had saved since I was 16 to 18 had been— had gone into a bank account. And when I ran away from home, I took that money and I decided that I was going to pay for my first quarter of college and then see what happened, basically just living on faith. I didn't really have a plan.

You mind my asking, why did you run away?

Yeah, I ran away because I didn't feel like I could talk about my feelings and that they would be heard or accepted. Mm-hmm, your family.

Yeah, yeah. But then one quarter later, your parents began paying for your college.

How did that happen? Well, we met and there were apologies made. And so I think there was just like a, you know, this was the plan from the beginning. Like, they had already planned to send, pay for me to go to college. So, you know, it was like, okay, let's just resume, resume the plan.

What is your relationship like with your parents now?

With my mom, it's good. I feel like there's been a lot of forgiveness present.

So that's been good.

And your dad? My dad actually just passed away 2 months ago. So I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. So just like, if he was like my best friend, so just like, and he was the money guy at the same time, looking at his lifestyle, like if he would have shared his knowledge, you know, he would have been able to make more. Um, but he was so, he was just such a good, like funny, really good at his job. Really. Um, a go-getter, very resourceful. He started working for an RV business about 3 years ago and he just took it to number 3 in Yuma, Arizona last year. And I was just so proud of him, you know, like he just like had a strong work ethic. But whenever it came to like, Dad, like, how do I do these systems? Or like, will you teach me? Like, you know, he was just so secretive about it. He's like, I can't tell you the secrets. Like, I can't, like, what do you mean? He, didn't share. Like, he didn't share how he did it. He didn't share— like, I would always make comments like, Dad, I should just come down and be your apprentice for like a year. Like, I would love to do that.

What did he say when you told him you want to apprentice with him?

He was like— he just laughed it off. He just, you know, he always held me at an arm's length away. Like, he just didn't know how to be present with me.

That is confusing and yeah, sad and beautiful all at the same time. I really appreciate you sharing that. I'm sorry for your loss. Yeah, thank you.

Notice the pattern here. Alex was told save, tithe, never carry credit card debt. Jackie was told we don't have the money for that. And Jackie's dad was the money guy. He was resourceful and successful, but secretive. He never shared what he actually did. You know, when parents don't openly talk about money, it really disadvantages their kids. You leave them to guess. And the truth is, kids usually get it wrong. Like Jackie, for example, she learned that money is contradictory and confusing. Sometimes it's scarce, sometimes it's plentiful, but it is never explained. You'd be amazed how many parents don't talk to their kids about money. Oh, they have all kinds of convenient reasons why we want to let kids be kids.

That's for adults.

Those are just excuses. The real truth is most parents don't even understand money themselves. So how can they ever teach their kids about money? Their lack of money education to their kids is more shame than strategy. And I'm going to say something direct to the parents here coming from a non-parent. Fix this. This is so important that if you don't improve your own relationship with money and you and your partner's relationship with money and then educate your children, You are leaving them at a lifelong disadvantage. This is not like, oh, I never taught my kid how to ski or how to swim in a current. No, money affects them every single week of their lives. Fix it. Alex and Jackie never got that education, which is why today they are still chasing and avoiding, still replaying those childhood money scripts. And you can see exactly how those scripts are shaping their relationship.

Right now. When you both think about the way that you were raised with money with your families from being young, what lessons do you think you're bringing from your childhood into this relationship with money?

I mean, for me, definitely the 10% tithing every month regardless of what the circumstances are. I don't think I've ever missed that ever. That's, and then having like an extreme aversion to debt. I think those are the two things that—

not that extreme.

You have debt, right? Yeah. Right. So talking out of two sides of my mouth, I, it feels uncomfortable and I feel uncomfortable about it every time I think about it.

Hmm. Okay. Jackie. But to speak to that too, Alex, I think like, because we were in debt and we saw the miracles that happened to bring us out of that, that it's almost like Oh, it's okay if we're in debt. Like, did you, do you feel like you budged a little bit or compromised in this area of debt? What, what, what's this miracle we're talking about? I purchased another program, um, after the Tony Robbins program. Okay. And it was $16,000 instead of $5,000. And I did ask Alex this time.

Well, what, what kind of program was this?

It was a photography business, essentially going back to school to get your studio certificate, kind of.

Okay. So you spent $16,000 and then?

And then I made $6,000 that year. And so I didn't make the money back. And so we had $9,000 that we owed on our credit card in November. And we knew that it was going to hit again in April. So we were like, okay, we have, you know, 5 months to make this money. What are we going to do? And so that's when we started meeting regularly and money just started showing up. Like we had a random person give us an envelope of $1,000 at church. We had, we got into a car accident that paid us $1,200 and nobody was hurt. No one was injured. You know, at that time I gave up my photography business. You know, like I had a heart to heart with God. It was like God was very much like, you need to like, this is, not what I have for you. And so I laid that down and like, I just saw how much like he loves me and cares about us. And by the grace of God, it like, we made $9,000 and I could not tell you how that happened.

Wait, that's what I want to know.

Where's the rest? The church wanted to hire me to redo their website and work for them. So that was $1,000 a month. Okay.

So that's $5,000. That's, that's great.

That's impressive.

So what was your takeaway from that experience going from November to April?

I just felt so supported. Like I was just like, man, like we can, like when we put our, when we come together and put our, you know, have an intention and a goal, like it can happen.

Okay. Alex, what was your takeaway from that experience?

Grateful, but I also felt like it was really lucky. Yeah. Gratitude and like, wow, we were really lucky.

Like that was, that was close. Hmm.

Jackie, you agree? Yeah. Yeah. There was this element of like, wow, like God really supported us. Like I don't like, yeah. Like it wasn't, it felt otherworldly.

Like it wasn't me. I'm asking and I'm probing here because you came to talk to me, not for example, somebody who works in the church and probably talks about money. You came to me. And so while I appreciate your religious beliefs, for me, hope is not a financial strategy. Yeah, God is not a financial strategy, right? In my view and the way that I work and in my material, we need to make a plan. And if other things happen that we cannot explain, I'll accept them. Great., but I don't need 'em. I need my plan and I'm gonna work the plan and I'm gonna make, I'm gonna engineer a rich life for myself and for my family. That is my approach. How do you both feel about that? I just wanna check in right now. Alex is nodding his head. Yeah. Um, Jackie's pausing and smiling and thinking carefully about her next words. Go ahead, Jackie. You don't have to walk on eggshells.

Say what you feel. No, I think I've, I've had, a lot of my decisions are more like are conflated with God. And people have told me that. I've gotten that before, where it's just like, I think you have religion and like morality and XYZ conflated.

Like it's not related. Oh, and how do you receive that feedback?

I'm like, I don't know what that means. Like, that's great. I'm glad that you see that.

But if you have any more insight, to show me that, I would appreciate that. I do. I mean, that's interesting that you've received that feedback.

Here's my take.

Two of you are religious and a lot of religion based on faith. What, what, uh, religious, what religion are you?

Christian.

Yeah. Christian.

Okay.

Yeah. All right.

So, you know, a lot of religion based on faith. Totally get it. And great. When it comes to money, you'll often see an intersection between dreamers and faith. Dreamers, one of the 4 money types in Money for Couples, you know, dreamers will use words like, um, if we are good people, God will provide. They'll, they'll sometimes say things like, um, I don't want to work a 9 to 5. I'm not into that. They will look for alternative types of income streams. Often finding themselves in things like MLMs, um, crypto, uh, schemes, things like that. They often believe that success is just one gig away or one deal away. And if we just get this one thing, if we just increase our income to $150K, like problem solved, we can pay off the debt. Dreamers don't usually like to engage about money, and I find it very interesting that you, You have shown me some really strong clues that you will engage about money. You're like, hey, break it down for me. Or I'm getting excited. Or, oh, we can't make the payment.

Gotta find a job.

Like, whoa. So you have this interesting dichotomy, but I am almost certain that your faith informs the way you see money. If we do the right thing, if we sit down, we will be provided for. Maybe. I hope that's true, but I can't depend on that. I need to make a plan, and I need to make sure that even if nothing external happens to us, this plan works.

How does that strike you?

Yeah, I mean, that it feels very secure.

Whoa, what do you mean by that? Well, inside of hoping, it's like there's a lot of reliance on God. And while I love relying on God, I would love to rely on God for other things and not financial security.

Love it. Maybe God needs to take a break from the financial advising. You know, he's got other things to worry about right now.

Listen closely to Alex and Jackie's story. They talk about miracles and luck and envelopes of cash at church, but in reality, they can only afford to talk like this because they have a built-in bailout, an interest-free loan from Alex's family. This is the hidden cost of relying on miracles. You start to live as if someone will always step in to save you, and sometimes they actually do. A family member floats you money or a windfall shows up. But each of these bailouts just reinforces the idea that we need to wait to be rescued. You don't build a real system. You don't make hard choices. You simply wait for the next rescue to appear. Well, rescues don't last forever. At some point, the money doesn't show up. And when that happens, you are exposed, especially because you never learned how to handle money yourself. You know, the funny thing is that when Jackie's back is against the wall, she actually stepped up very well. She told Alex, I'm gonna go out and get a job. She did the next day. But why do we have to wait until you are running out of money? People living their rich life never wait until their back is against the wall. They make plans well ahead of time. That's why I'm pushing Alex and Jackie so hard here. Faith can bring comfort, but in the long term, faith doesn't pay the bills.

A system does. So let's bring it back to trust here. When the word trust gets brought up, it's like a red flag for me. I lean in, I want to know what's going on. So when we reflect on what has happened in the past with money, we have Alex who says, I sometimes trust Jackie, but not always. Alex, you've created this Byzantine system where Jackie has to text you all this stuff.

Right.

And then like, and then like, what do you even do with it? You like fiddle around with it. You process the data, but does it nothing? And then we have the history of buying these, what I might call dreamer purchases. You know, if I buy this multi-thousand dollar course, nope, not that course. Actually, let me buy this course. Like it'll all kind of, this'll be the one thing. What do you notice as I illustrate? What I've heard today.

Jackie? I mean, I'm definitely a dreamer. I, I mean, yep. Okay.

I mean, you've nailed it. How do you think being a dreamer affects the dreamer's partner?

Oh yeah, um, leaves— I mean, probably has them running around trying to catch all the chickens because there's so many dreams. So I'm not the chicken, it's my dreams are the chickens.

Wow, well said.

Yeah, Alex agrees. Yeah, I do. That's, that's true. Because I love her and I support her. And that's why I, you know, went along with the things that I was brought into. But, you know, it's hard.

Yeah. One of my favorite things is when people go through an experience and then they take away completely the wrong message. And I kind of love it, you know, like they're like, uh, hey Ramit, I was running late to this thing. So I decided to run the red light. I was going 80 and there was a cop. They turn on their sirens. But then they took a left and I realized, as long as you are going 80 and your car is green, cops don't pull you over. I go, what the fuck? That's not the takeaway from that story. There was a bank robbery and you just got lucky cuz they had to go to something more important.

That's the wrong takeaway.

In some ways, I feel there might be the wrong takeaway here because the takeaway of Oh my God, we have this debt. So you both sat down, you both had an honest conversation about how your financial situation together. There was a sense of urgency. We have this many months. Third, you made a plan. And what did you do during those months, by the way? Were you meeting regularly? Some might even say religiously, all the time, never missing it, right?

Yes, sir.

Yeah. And then good things started to happen. Now I'm glad good things started to happen. That's awesome. And perhaps it, you know, there was something in the air.

Perhaps it was faith.

Perhaps you were more attuned to opportunities like at the church. Great. Doesn't matter to me, but the fact is you were doing specific behaviors. All right. And then once the debt was paid off, what happened to those meetings? They stopped. And then the debt or the spending has gone up. Like there's a very strong correlation here.

The behavior affects the outcome. No, I mean that, yeah, that makes sense for sure.

100%. Yeah, but I don't want negative behavior to— it's like our poor choices to fuel our desire to have positive behavior. Like, I'd rather just have the positive behavior outright.

Agreed.

So let's all agree that we want to minimize the quote negative behavior. Once in a while things might happen. That's okay. We'll give each other some grace. No problem. But in general, let's, let's optimize for a positive, rich life, not like preventing all the bad things that can happen. Right? Everybody's good with that? Absolutely. Cool. All right, Alex, what would you need in order for you to financially trust Jackie again?

I'm— I realize I'm basing it on a feeling. So like, if— I don't know how to explain it. Like a feeling of of trust that, that anything that's going to be significantly impactful for our family, that we'll be able to discuss and have an honest conversation about it.

She needs to be willing to talk to you about money.

That's it. Well, I mean, I want to see like results, obviously. Like I'd love to have 6 months of expenses in the savings and to be trending positive instead of trending negative. And obviously that's on both of us, but if I saw that, I would trust her also because my perception is that the, a lot of the downward trend is from purchases that she's making.

Jackie, what do you hear there? Okay, Alex, I mean, I could be completely wrong and off base, so let me know, but I, I remember meeting a couple of times after our debt was gone and we were trajectorying up and it was like, okay, we're gonna meet 4 months. Like, this is awesome. You know, it was really like, like, okay, we're gonna have that money in the bank. So now we can start putting money towards these dreams that we have. And I just feel like you have such resistance to that being a reality because of the fear of actually having these dreams come to pass. Mm-hmm. And so like, I remember feeling discouraged. Like I remember it's like suddenly there were like these expenses that were coming up that were preventing us from getting to 4 months. And I just wanted to like snowball stuff so that we could just get that 4 months, you know, tucked under. 'Cause I think that's been a huge conversation too, is like, okay, we can once we get 3 months and then it's like, but then it changes. It's like, oh, once we get 4 months. Okay. Once we get 6 months and it's like, well, it's never going to end. And then I get discouraged and then it's like, well, what's the point of even saving anything? Okay.

But Alex, I think she makes some good points though. Is there a fear that, hey, you know, okay, we hit this thing, but now I need to move the goalposts. It needs to get bigger and bigger. Are you afraid of Jackie spending money on music or another course?

I feel like our current financial situation. The way it stands now without intervention, which is why we're here, we can't afford to do those things. So I, and it seems impossible from where we stand now without changing a lot. And so, yeah, I guess like there is a fear of like, hey, it doesn't show up to me as a fear, but I'm totally open to the fact that it might be. To me, it feels like reality says, hey, if we're losing money every month, We can't, like, we don't even have enough to cover expenses if something happened. I don't feel comfortable spending that on music. So that's what it feels like to me.

Can you both be right?

Yeah.

Jackie, is it possible that Alex is right? You're spending more than you make. You're in a critical financial danger zone. And you are also right that you want to eventually be able to record some of your songs.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally. That's good. I'll tell you something. Life cannot simply be putting out fires for the rest of our life. How do both of you feel about that? Amazing. I love that. That's why both of you have to be involved. And I actually have a lot of confidence you can do it because you've proven in the past that you can do it. Like, you sat down, you made those freaking meetings, you put those kids to sleep, you said, we have a goal, we're going to solve this. And you did. The problem is that you did it in a very episodic way. Means like a one-off way. Let's just do this one thing, kind of like fix it. You basically put a patch on the wall and you're like, ah, this shit looks good enough. We're outta here. We can't do that. This is for the rest of your life. It is a totally different relationship with money, and we're gonna tackle it by looking at the conscious spending plan.

Okay. Jackie is a dreamer, but I relish the rare opportunity to work with a dreamer because wanting to spend money is not selfish. It's normal. It's actually healthy. That's why guilt-free spending is an integral part of my system. Money is meant to be enjoyed. The real problem isn't Jackie's desire to spend. It's that she and Alex don't actually have a real plan. So of course spending feels episodic and arbitrary. And when Alex changes the rules, like 3 months of savings or 4 or 6, of course Jackie feels like she'll never get her turn. This is why it is so important to have regular monthly money conversations and a conscious spending plan that you both understand. They focus you on getting clear about what you actually want, what you need, cutting back on the things you don't care about, and even protecting the things you really do care about. A monthly money meeting allows you to create space for both partners to share your dreams. Now, you can do this on your own. You can use my Money for Couples book that just came out. I have the exact words to say, or If you want us to help you do it even more and make it effortless, you should just join my money coaching program. We do this, we meet every single month. You are going to love it. As for Alex and Jackie, it's time to face an uncomfortable truth.

Here are your numbers. My assessment of these numbers is that you are in considerable danger. I'll tell you why I see that. When I look at your income, you're at $91,000 gross. And you have a big family. So with that income and a big family, even with relatively low housing costs, the numbers really matter. The numbers really matter. Like, we can't just be randomly spending an extra $800 or $1,200 a month, which is exactly what's happening here. Your fixed costs are simply too high. You are actually spending more than you make every single month when you factor everything in, and you are putting yourself at risk because you don't have very much going to investments and you, your savings are at zero. You are very close to running out of money, like within a matter of months. And while I hope you have people to save you, if you don't, you are really screwed.

How does my analysis strike you both? I'm just back there again where, you know, Alex is like, what are we going to do?

It's like, okay, let's go make money. Your natural tendency is to apply a patch on the wall.

Yeah.

Like quickly, let's make money quickly. And that mindset has to change. I'm surprised you're not freaking out. I'm— me too. Why, why is that? Like you're months away from running outta money. Is it that like somebody will provide, it's always been fine, it's gonna be fine again? Yeah. Yeah. Alex will protect, Alex is in charge. He'll figure it out.

That kind of thing. Yeah. Then Alex, yeah.

Alex will figure it out. Yeah. Okay. Here's what we're going to do. I'm putting these numbers up on screen. What I want is for us to try to get these numbers back to the standard conscious spending plan numbers, 50 to 60% for fixed costs, 5 to 10 for savings and investing, and 20 to 35 for guilt-free spending. It's not gonna work exactly the same. Everyone's is different, but we're gonna use that as our benchmark and you're gonna have to make some tough decisions. The way I think about it, my mental model is right now the house is on fire. We gotta put this freaking fire out. Once that fire's out, um, we rebuild some stuff.

All right.

But first we gotta start, stop the fire, make some tough changes. Are we all down for that approach? Yes. Yeah. All right, let's do it. Jackie, what changes should we make on the fixed costs, which are currently 87% to try to bring them to 60%?

I need to look at groceries and look at what meals that we like to eat that don't require a lot of ingredients.

Great. Groceries are $1,550 a month. How much do you think you could get that number to realistically?

It seems like, I mean, I want to do $1,200.

All right, fine. All right. So here, watch, watch what happens. I want you to look at this number, this fixed cost number of 87%. As I change your groceries from $1,550 to $1,200, what did the number drop to?

Whoa.

81.

81%.

Okay, cool. I feel very confident you can get to $1,200. Yeah.

What's next? Uh, Alex, we could drop subscriptions a bit, but I don't think it's going to make a ton of a difference. Tell me the number.

Yeah, I think, let's see, Canvas 14. Um, I can get rid of Amazon and we have MLB.

That's 30. $7. I think we could get that to $70.

$70. All right. Here's the number from 81% fixed costs down to 80%.

What's next?

I mean, I could do $50 in clothes instead of $150. 4 kids.

Are you sure?

We don't need clothes every month. That's a good answer. $50 down to 79%.

What's next? So the part that says car payment, transportation, so that $170 that's showing is gas. I'm confident we could do, we could fill up each car once in the month, which would be about like $140.

All right.

$140.

Yeah.

78%. Then here's the tricky part, right? The easy call here for a lot of people would be eliminate tithing, right? Because that would bring us immediately down to the number. And then it's hard with the beliefs around that, right? So to me, the answer then is just make more money.

How do you feel about that, Jackie? Yeah, I mean, the same. I mean, it's like when we give 10% of what we're receiving, like, that is like our way of trusting the Lord.

I've spoken to several people who tithe and they're in financial distress. So I have a couple of questions for you. What if you did 2%?

I think for me, there's just, to be honest, there's like fear, fear around the whole thing. Fear of what?

Oh, fear of that being wrong.

What do you mean? Like morally wrong to not tithe 10%?

Yeah. Okay. And Jackie, what if you tithe 2%?

Yeah. Like God would be like, hey, like I've given you $91,000 a year and you can't tithe. Like, You can't give me $500.

Like, okay, let's keep going. What if you were like, yes, that's correct, I actually can't give you $569, but I can give you less?

I mean, what happens then? Uh, he would not support us financially or, or spiritually, or would we? I don't know if we would go to—

I don't think we're going to hell. This is like a This is a very important question. Again, I appreciate your religious beliefs. And again, if you tell me like, hey, we're just going to do 10 and let's move on to something else, I'm totally down for that. But to me, it's such an important question to probe. And what I'm hearing are quite murky answers. Notice I did not say zero. Yeah, it's a different set of lenses to put on. Again, I'm not saying give up your religious beliefs. Not at all. In fact, keep going to church. Like, when I was growing up, we would go to our temple, our gurdwara, and we would do something called seva. It's like we would serve people food and we would, like, pass out prasad and stuff like that. That's how we do it. And there are lots of ways to do it. I know tithing is how you were raised, Alex, but what I'm trying to do is kind of expand our possibilities here because $569 a month right now, you've made all these changes. You've essentially cut almost everything you could, and you are still at 78%. Yeah, you are broke. Yeah. Jackie, what's going on for you?

I see you thinking. I just don't know. I mean, I've just— I've never considered cutting, tithing, and what that would— I mean, how that would affect me mentally and spiritually.

And, you know, okay, fair enough.

Alex, what about you?

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's just for me, just what's present is, yeah, just fear around it because of that being such a deep, deep belief and not even so much from a, it's weird, more so from a, this is just the way I was raised, what you're supposed to do. For me, it's, I think more that than it is like, I believe God's gonna like lightning bolt me if we don't tie, like tradition.

Yeah. It's like, I've done this my whole life. You've seen your parents do it. And if I don't do it, then what happens? And also, who does that make me? Because I'm the kind of person who has tithed and never missed it. Sure. Can I ask a provocative question? What if you brought your tithing down dramatically, but you both said, look, this is important to us. We don't like that we are in this situation. And one of the compromises we have to make right now is that we can't tithe the way we want to as a family. Here is our plan, and this is going to light a fire under us. Number 1, we are going to pay off our debt. We're going to build up our emergency fund to this amount. We're going to set our investments and get control of our money. 2, once we hit those numbers, we are going to increase our tithing. By 1%, and then at the next milestone, 1%, and eventually we will bring our tithing back up. And when we hit XYZ milestone, we may even pay back the old tithing that we missed. But right now our house is on fire and we have to protect our family first.

How do you think that would go over? I think I'm in support of that for sure.

Yeah, I mean, that sounds like the slow growth that you were talking about.

Yeah.

Wow.

So you would both be open to that?

Yeah.

I love that.

Okay, that's amazing.

One thing I really like about talking to both of you is this is, like, perhaps the most fraught question of all that we have discussed. This goes deeper than a number on a spreadsheet. This is who you believe you are, your relationship with God. And even still, when I'm pushing and probing You are listening and you are, you're dancing with me. And I appreciate that. That to me shows me you are ready to make some changes.

It's really moving. Like I'm really moved right now that like the possibility that, that God doesn't like that either. And that like he wants to help us get back up to 10%.

Great.

Yes. Let's make it happen.

Yeah. All right.

Here we go. So I'm going to take this $569 a month. And I'm going to drop it to $50 just to see what happens from $569 a month tithing at 10% to $50. Watch this fixed cost number.

Whoa.

What just happened?

Dropped 69%. 69%.

What do you both think of that right now? It's a lot better than where it was. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's a bit high still, but we are within striking distance. It is way better. Than where you were.

Way better.

I thought this was extremely interesting. In almost every situation where I've had somebody on the show and they tithe to their church, I'll ask them, are you willing to change that? Almost 100% of the time they go, nope. And you know what I say? Fine, we'll work around it. The people I talk to who are tithing are often in severe debt and still even facing bankruptcy, even facing running out of money with kids, they'll go, nope, we are going to continue tithing. I go, okay, fine. That's not because I necessarily agree with it. It is that it is hard enough to get people to cancel a $10 streaming subscription. You think I'm going to get someone to cancel something that is part of their identity?

Not likely.

Instead, my approach is let me acknowledge that's important to you. I'm totally fine with it. Let me show you what else we can do. Sometimes if you tithe, it means that you cannot buy a new car for 16 years. Sometimes it means you cannot buy that house. You cannot send your kids to college. I just want to lay out the ramifications in black and white, and then you decide what's important to you. In this case, as I asked them, I could tell they were slightly open to changing it, and that's why I decided to go down this path and take some time to show them a different way of thinking about tithing. Notice that I did not try to get them to cut it to zero. That's not my place. It wouldn't work. Instead, what I was doing was understanding what it means to them and then showing them different options. Most of us operate in the world of money in a very simplistic, sometimes even childlike way. I like this, therefore I pay for it, and that's it. That's the extent of why we pay for a certain type of supplement that we take, or Netflix, or whatever. What we often don't realize is that we can almost take our spending and turn it into multiple dimensions. I don't mean to sound super woo-woo, but we can spend less for 6 months and then spend even more. We can invest over here and allow us to 10x our spending 10 years down the line. There's so many different ways to look at our spending. It's almost 3-dimensional the way I see it. And that was some of what I wanted to share with Alex and Jackie. I will say I am extremely pleased that they finally opened themselves up to a new way of looking at their tithing. That is incredibly impressive. It almost never happens. And in my opinion, it's a very positive sign for how flexible they are willing to be in order to live their rich life.

So all that extra money that we just cut dropped all the way down to your guilt-free spending. Right now you have $1,653 per month to spend or allocate however you want. Now, obviously, we don't want you to be spending that much because you have other priorities. What are those other priorities?

Savings.

Yeah, yeah, you need savings and investing. Yes, savings and investing. I would say probably even— I might argue prioritizing savings because your current savings of $16,000, just very risky. Very risky. I do want to point something out. By bringing your fixed costs down, your savings now provide a longer runway. So you're at actually 4 months, which is good. That's good. I really like that. I think you should do more. So let's take some of this money, $1,653, and let's put it towards your emergency fund. How much do you want to do? Let's try it. If we get it wrong, we'll change it.

Jackie?

Okay, let's do $200. Okay, great. So $200. Watch what happens to this number and this number. $200 a month means you are now saving 4% of take-home pay. Usually I like to see that number at 5 to 10%.

Okay.

Okay. So like right now we're not hitting the number, but we're within striking distance. And usually I like to see this guilt-free spending number at 20 to 35%. I don't know. But can I ask you something? You're at 26% right now. What number, if you had to guess, since I recommend that most people are at 20 to 35%, what number do you think you should be at for guilt-free spending?

Higher or lower, like at the high end or the low end of that range?

Um, maybe the higher end. I probably would say the lower end or even lower because you have debt and you're not tithing. So how can you be spending more on like eating out and all this stuff if you're not tithing the way you want to? Totally right. Okay, cool. So I would probably have that number below 20%, which is almost like, hey, we're gonna as a family come together, hit these milestones as quickly as possible, and then we can loosen up and, you know, go out to pizza once in a while.

How do you feel about that?

That's so good. Yeah, so I Candidly feel we can do more than $200 a month.

Like a lot more. Let's bump it up.

Really? I think so.

Oh yeah.

Tell me, like what's $800?

Damn.

I like it. $800 puts you at 14% for savings and 15% for guilt-free spending. Okay. Is there something about a bonus in here, Alex? Yeah.

So that is something that I did not account for in the She— how much?

Uh, 10% once a year in the spring. Oh, wow. $9,000. Yep. Wait a minute. That changes everything.

So what do you do with the money?

Well, that covers all the costs that we're bleeding. We're still overspending though.

Still? I'm pretty sure. Okay. Okay. We're going to fix this right now. Even with the extra $9,000, you were still losing money.

Even with a $100,000 salary.

So we got to fix that systematically. So what are you going to do with the $9,000 now? Because notice you are actually not overspending anymore. If you actually stick to this plan, yeah, every month you are saving $800 a month. You've cut your tithing, you've cut your groceries.

Okay.

What are you going to do with that roughly $9,000 that comes in as a bonus?

Yeah.

Pay off the car. That's one option.

What else? Throw them out. I would put a ton of it in savings toward the emergency fund until that's locked down.

You could do that.

Yep. What else? I put the bump to giving back up.

Hmm. Here's how I might think about it. I always like to have rules for unexpected income and we do it by percentage. So for a lot of people, if they have no debt, they might do something like 70% goes to investing, 30% goes. To guilt-free spending, something like that. Of course, if you have debt, you, you know, you want to put more towards debt, et cetera, et cetera. My suggestion is save like 50% of it. What that does is it takes your bonus and in a systematic way, it builds savings even more. So that's $4,500. Y'all want to do something for yourself? Maybe put some money aside for a dream.

Yeah, I'd love to like put it towards the music that Jackie was talking about.

I think that'd be awesome. I love that. As long as the bonus comes in, I'm going to have some money put aside in a specific savings account called Jackie's Music.

What do you think about that, Jackie? Yes.

Yeah.

This is great.

All right.

What do you need to do in order to make this work?

I feel relatively confident, but Jackie, stop me if this is not correct. We don't want to do the text message thing. That's archaic and terrible. How do we track the stuff to meet these numbers, but in a way that's not sort of that?

Yeah, I totally agree. So Jackie, do you remember how much the grocery amount is per month? Yeah, it's $1,200. Yeah, $1,200. How many times a month do you shop? 3, 3 times a week.

Okay.

3 times a week. So, so basically each time you go, Do you know how much you spend on average each time you go? Yeah, um, probably $200 or around $200. Okay, if you go 3 times a week as you've been doing, $100 each time.

Yes.

So you have to manage to the number. Now you have a number, so it's actually like it becomes a whole different type of shopping experience. Like, this is my mission, this is what I have to hit.

And you are responsible for it. You may need to talk to Alex and be like, Alex, like, I can't do this with all the kids. I need you to figure out how to help.

So I, I need to be able to build up my intuition. I'm sure the two of you can discuss that, but over time you'll get really good at it. Like, I give it like a month, you're gonna be sailing. Sailing.

You're gonna nail this.

Okay?

Yeah.

Both of you working together, realizing it's not about micro numbers, it's about the big picture. There are like 2 or 3 key numbers that need to be tracked. They need to be hit and all the rest of it. Put a system around it. Reduce your tithing number, reduce your subscriptions number.

And the 2 of you should really be talking not only at the in the weeds level, but like, hey, how many months until our savings account is full? We can actually look at the numbers.

How many months until we can start increasing our tithing by 1%? How many months until you can go record your first song?

That's the level I want you talking at. That's huge.

Yeah, that's huge.

It's incredible.

So those changes to me are like incredible. They are actually changing who you are and giving yourselves an even better tomorrow. And you can do it all on one income if you are dialed in and systematic about it.

Like, I really feel confident, um, in owning my identity that I, like, that I can show up for Alex and that's gonna bring us the connection that I was so deeply looking for.

Yeah, just, I mean, even just having the conversation and having a plan, like I already feel trust restored and I see what the part I played in that and the part that Jackie played in that and how that all came together to make that whole thing, but that we can like easily move past that and with a plan that we won't have to worry about falling into that again, because when you have a plan and you execute it, just keeps going.

Yeah, I love that. It, it goes up. It gets better, not harder. It gets better.

That's awesome. Do you remember where these two started? Alex didn't trust Jackie with money, so he tracked every dollar for 10 years on a spreadsheet that only he understood. But the system did nothing. It never actually changed their reality. And Jackie noticed, so she kept doing what she always did, chasing dreams, waiting for a bailout from family, from strangers, from God. This is how couples get stuck. They take on roles without talking about them. Those roles calcify, and soon it's 10 years later and neither one is happy. Rich life, forget about it. My partner won't even look at my spreadsheet. The breakthrough for Alex and Jackie wasn't just cutting back on groceries or even rethinking their tithing. It was realizing that neither of them could keep playing their old roles. They needed a new shared plan that made room for their dreams and their finances. And if you're wondering how Alex and Jackie are doing today, check out this update they just sent me.

Biggest surprise working for Ramit Sethi was just that Alex felt like he had to manage my ideas, and I am genuinely excited about being responsible for my ideas, for sharing in this new partnership to create this financial budget that really works for the both of us so that both of us can be stress-free about ideas, dreams, and the state of our finances. My biggest takeaway has been that tithing doesn't have to be a fixed number, that it can be fluid. So that's been really freeing. We sat down and talked about the budget already that we're going to be using. I feel like there's just more intention and it's fun. It's become kind of a game. I already feel like things are changing in a really positive way.

My biggest surprise from the conversation was just how willing and excited Jackie is about partnering with me in the finances and coming together and each of us having sort of our own areas of responsibility. So that's a huge blessing. Biggest takeaway is that building a better financial future for our family, is something that will happen via small but consistent changes over time rather than trying to solve everything all at once. And so watching those dollar amounts build every month until we can build that emergency fund back up is going to be really exciting. We have already resumed our weekly meetings where we talk about a bunch of different things like our kids, homeschooling, but specifically adding the financial piece back in there and really spending time getting on the same page. We are abandoning our archaic and complex spreadsheet to use the Conscious Spending Plan. And so it's nice to have those streamlined categories that actually make sense and lead to change rather than sort of our craziness that we've been doing for the last almost 10 years. And then just, yeah, adjusting those category amounts so that we're saving every month instead of losing money every month.

Been about 3 and a half weeks since we chatted with Ramit Sethi, and the biggest insight I received is that I could be in control of my own spending. Right before, it was me texting Alex my spending habits, and he would keep track of it all in the spreadsheet, and I didn't get to see the numbers. And how we've changed our direction now is I'm in charge of all of my spending. So I've been given control back. I no longer feel out of control, and that's been really nice to have these categories really set in stone per se. But even combining guilt-free spending with groceries gives me a little bit of incentive because I'm like, okay, if I spend less on groceries, I'll have more in guilt-free spending. So there's a little bit of mind game I play with myself, but it's been really effective. We came in under budget last month with $8, so hallelujah! Thank you, Ramit Sethi, so much. We have been keeping track of receipts. We add up all those receipts at the end of the week so we're not texting each other anymore, and, um, the money has a place, especially when we're doing our weekly meetings. So Thank you, thank you, thank you 1,000 times. It's changed so much for us. It's so nice to have self-control in one area. I just hope that it continues to bleed over into other areas.

So thank you. It's been a little over 3 and a half weeks, and the biggest insight that stuck with me is just the simplest one, which is that sharing responsibility for the finances within a partnership works wonders. And so Jackie and I have started doing that. It's been incredible. We've just been sort of synced up in a way that we haven't been in a long time. So we're grateful for that. We eliminated $50 worth of subscriptions that we realized we don't really care about or need. We have shared responsibilities with certain categories of finances. We came in under $1,200 for the first time in a long time for groceries. It was amazing to just live within our means for the first time while still dreaming of, you know, the things we want to save up for and do. So not only did we put away the big chunk that we were saving, but we also spent a tiny bit less than we had planned on spending and we didn't feel deprived in any way. So big changes have been happening for us and we're really grateful for it.

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