“I’m afraid he’ll leave if I keep stressing about money”

For me, I felt like he wasn't.

Doing his job because his job was to earn money.

Yes. Sometimes I just say, well, I don't know what else to do. Like, I'm working as hard as I can. I guess that we're just going to be in the red. I can't do anything about it. I guess we're just going to be broke.

That's where my empathy ends. I get very frustrated with that same conversation over and over and over again. Whether we've got a lot of money in the bank account or whether we've got very little money in the bank account. I feel like we're playing a very, very opposite game.

On paper, we're not broke, but it just feels like we are.

I've supported the family for the last 25 years. And then she reminds me about that one year where we had to sign up for discounted school lunches. And, yeah, it can be pretty nasty.

Because, like, I could never hit the number. And I feel like we try really, really hard. Yeah, I just don't think it's even possible.

Meet Sandra and Brett. Sandra is 46. Brad is 48. They have four children and they are living a pretty high lifestyle. Private school, ballet, sports camps. They have a bedroom set that costs $25,000. In the past, they have had a very high income, but things have changed. When their income went down, they started to get a lot more stressed out about money. And now they are both resentful for different reasons. She resents him and his income. He resents her and her anxiety around money. Well, I'll tell you that this conversation had a ton of surprising turns. So I want you to pay close attention today. I'm going to make sure that throughout the episode, I share what I'm thinking and a little bit of the psychology that I am observing. I recently went to visit the dentist, and I got to tell you, one of the best things about going to the dentist now is that my assistant arranges all the paperwork. No paperwork, no filling out anything. I love it. Now, this is a perfect example of my favorite money dial, which is convenience. And there are a lot of other ways that I use money to make my life more convenient. This Saturday, in my newsletter, I'm going to share five things I do every month to make my life more convenient. And you can only get this on Saturday, January 20th, at iwt.com podcastnewsletter now, in their application, Sandra mentioned that Brad has had to ask for money in the past to buy a Slurpee. And I want to start there, because that origin of the story has affected the way that they both think about money for a long time. Listen in.

When we were first married, we made like $11,000 the first year that we were married. And we were in school, very poor. I managed the budget from the very beginning, and there was no room for anything extra. Like, literally nothing extra. So in the beginning, it was very contentious when he would want to go and get something. And I didn't grow up in a house where you'd go to get Slurpees. That was like a luxury kind of to get sodas and things like that. But. But for him, that was like something he just wanted to enjoy. And so it became something where he would. He would say that very thing that I have to get permission to go and get a Slurpee. And eventually we tried to make it into a positive thing and have it be our slurpee fund. So each of us had a Slurpee fund, and you could spend it on whatever you wanted. But in the beginning, it was really negative. And it is something that's still brought up, I don't think, in a very positive way.

That's interesting. Do you still have a Slurpee fund?

No.

What happened to it?

Our money has gone so up and down over the years that if we have extra, then the slurpee fund is like, massive. And you can buy anything you want and come home with like, ATVs and whatever. And I just go, oh, you bought another atv. But when money's tight, I'm watching every single thing and texting him and saying, what was this for? And what was this $12 for? And when I'm balancing the budget so it dies when there's not excess, when there's excess that we have slurpee funds.

For me, it was. Was comic relief. It was a way for me to. To joke around about this new environment that I was experiencing as a newlywed. I didn't grow up in a wealthy home, and I never felt like I was an extravagant spender. But when we first got married, this. This whole idea of a budget was. Was a new concept to me, and I felt like it was pretty harsh and it was pretty severe. We canceled our telephone for 25 bucks a month. So, like, we were living lifes of a nomad.

Like, there were no cell phones, right? You had no phone.

Yeah, this was back in 1998, and there was no cell phone. So, like, we were saving 25 bucks a month, but we didn't have a phone. It was a shtick that I used to just try to find some light heartedness in the whole situation. It was difficult dealing with this budget into that extreme. I think we had like $100 per month set aside for food when we were first starting to figure it out.

How many years, how long have you been married for?

25.

Okay. Congratulations.

Thank you.

25 this year.

25 will be 26 in 2024. So you'll be 25 this year.

Congratulations. That's a big deal.

Thank you. Okay.

All right. So I have a question about money and being married for 25 years. So I completely understand that when a lot of couples get married, coming together is hard enough. And oftentimes if you're getting married pretty young, it's doubly hard because you're not making a lot of money. Okay, so I, I get that. Has it changed over time?

Which aspect? As far as.

Did money ever become easy?

Yes, but it doesn't stay easy. It became easy when we were making a lot of money.

Okay, and when you say easy, describe that for me. What does easy mean to you?

We didn't worry about budgeting things. I always knew there was plenty and then some to work with. I didn't have to ask permission. He didn't ask permission. We just bought what we wanted to.

Okay, that's easy. Okay.

Yeah.

It was so easy.

Okay. And just so I understand, when you say there was plenty, you mean there was plenty of money in your checking account. Right.

And we were putting money into like 401k and we had self directed IRAs and things like that because there was so much money.

Okay.

We needed something to do with it, but mostly we just. There was plenty in checking. Like I never had to worry that a bill was going to come out and it was going to overdraft. I could plan an extra day on our trip and stop at Disney World on the way home and take the four kids and not worry about it.

And then what about when it was not easy?

That's like been. I feel like more of the time that it's not been easy in that way. When it's not easy, it's watching everything and being meticulous with where the money's going and keeping track of it and being stressed, being stressed about it.

You know, just like you used to do when you made $11,000.

Yeah, yeah. Actually that probably felt less stressful because I knew we were so dirt broke that nothing was an option and I didn't have any kids that needed anything. And I was very good at self sacrificing. And so it wasn't a big deal to me. It was. I've thought about this a lot. I think it was like a badge of honor. Look at how much I can do with so little.

Right. And who taught you that? Your mom?

Definitely. Yeah.

Okay. Brad, has money gotten easier since the Slurpee stuff? Harder or both?

It's been a roller coaster, good years and bad years. So for better or worse, I'm an entrepreneur in my guts. So we had an opportunity to make some entrepreneurial moves. A commission type moves, 100% opportunity based. And for the most part, it's been steady. In some years, they've been like out of control. You know, like when we're bringing in 70 to $100,000 per month. And those are like the. Some of the best times of our marriage when we aren't having that level of friction or stress that's pressing down on the marriage. But there have been some lean months, too.

What made it the best years of your marriage?

The financial considerations weren't like the top considerations. What was where we were going to travel, where we were going to go to, what, what opportunities we could provide to our kids.

Okay.

Not. Not having to worry about that dreadful end of month coming to God moment when we have to reconcile the budget.

I. How many times do you remember over the course of a 25 year marriage, you've had that coming to God conversation?

25 times? 12.

Minus a couple of years.

It's pretty much monthly minus, minus a couple of years.

So, Sandra, when you're doing these end of the month calculations, walk me through what you're calculating.

I feel like you're going to make fun of me, but I have a lot of spreadsheets and lots of categories. Too many, I'm sure.

Can we just hear what some of those categories are? Read them off. I know they're on your computer right now. They are, of course, one click away. They're never closed.

They're never closed. You're so right. The table. I was just working on it. So I will, I will blame some of it on that.

All right, just read some of those categories, love, for the whole world to hear it.

Okay, we have like auto repairs, auto registration, ballet camp, basketball camp, books, birthdays, Ryan Cancun, trip. I don't know how to take them off once I put a trip on there. I don't lump them all together. Every trip is separate.

You break out by trip. Not just travel, but by trip. Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Because I feel like you have to budget for each Trip, like dog food.

Cinema, dog food, wet dog food, dry dog food, organic.

I only have one line for that. Like clothing. I put Costco annual fee because it surprised me. And I was like, I would put that in there.

How much is the Costco annual fee?

It was $193.

Okay, let's talk about this for a second. So $193 and you have a line item for it?

I know it only comes up once a year. I didn't know what to do with it.

Okay, so talk me through your thinking, because I want to understand this meeting. And part of this meeting is, like, the intense amount of categories. So you have a Costco renewal. It's $193.

Yeah.

You didn't know where to do it, so you added a category, right?

Yeah, I just put a category.

How many categories approximately? Like, to the closest 50. How many categories do you have?

Oh, that's not. It's not that bad. I have. Okay. I have 82 it.

Okay. When you look. This is. This is going to be good. When you look at this spreadsheet, when you look at it, what do you feel? First word.

Sick.

So walk me through, like, what happens around the 25th of the month. What do you do?

Well, lately, I've been doing it every week, but just because things are pretty tight, it feels like to me, they're really tight. And normally I'll go through all of our credit cards and our checking and everything and put all of the charges in and then categorize those super manually.

So, like, you log into whatever credit cards you have, and there's a thing that says $13.64, and you copy that and paste it in to the spreadsheet.

Oh, my gosh. I feel like you're laughing. Okay. Yes, that is what I do. And then I have to take all those numbers and put them into the budget spreadsheet because I don't really know how to make them talk to each other.

So.

So there's two different spreadsheets. One that's the charges and one that's the budget. And so I literally am, like, manually putting them over, which is why I started doing it once a week, because once a month, it was, like, really big and took forever. And overwhelmed. Yeah.

I mean, if you do something that's stressful and makes you feel sick and then your husband hates it, you definitely want to do it four times as much. That's. I got you. Okay, so wait. Stick with me. Stick with me. So you're doing all this, and as you are doing it. What, do you feel guilty? Why?

Because, like, I couldn't ever hit the number right.

The numbers that you set up for yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I feel like we try really, really hard.

Yeah.

But it's not. I just don't think it's even possible. But. And if it is good, I don't know, it's nice. I'm like, oh, we did really good. But usually by the first week in the month, I already know that all that money's allocated. And so the whole rest of the month, it's super stressful to buy anything, even if it's stuff that we need, because I know that we're already, like, at our capacity.

It's like you're failing a test.