“My wife doesn't respect me because she earns 5x more”

On today's episode, meet Dylan and Carrie.

I like how I feel about money. I personally wish that you could kind of feel more relaxed about money.

I tend to blow things out of proportion or kind of like leap to a bigger problem.

Dylan is 30, Carrie is 29. And they are struggling with their disparity in income.

I feel like if I made more money, Carrie's stress and pressure would go away.

Carrie works in tech. She earns a very high income, but she's constantly worried about money.

And I wouldn't know what being relaxed or confident about money even looks like. The worrying just really comes naturally to me. I find comfort in, like, looking down the road a little bit and seeing potential problems.

Dylan is a PhD student. He earns a $40,000 annual stipend, and he is frustrated by Carrie's belittling comments.

I have said that I'm the breadwinner and he's my housewife.

And her inability to to see their combined income in a positive light.

I think we'd just be happier if, like, we, we did feel like we made over 200k.

Carrie's view of finances is so negative that it's causing her to drag her feet on taking a bucket list vacation that they've been planning for years.

When we talk about doing something that is relatively affordable given how much money we have, like going to Japan, it's like yes and then no and then yes and then no. Because you she's constantly worrying about, you.

Know, the future can carry improve her money psychology so they can live a happier, richer life together.

I've always felt that way about money. I have to actively work to not feel that way.

Let's meet Dylan and Carrie. I want to say thank you to Amazon Music for selecting Money for Couples as a new year new you featured show. And here's a reminder that you can listen to Money for Couples episodes every week on Amazon Music. Or ask Alexa. Alexa, play Money for Couples with Ramit Sethi on Amazon Music. Okay, I have Dylan and Carrie's conscious spending plan in front of me. I'm getting ready for our conversation. Let's take a look at what I noticed. This is a young couple, I think 29 and 30 years old. $415,000 in assets, probably a house. Investments, $341,000 at that age. Very impressive savings. 23,000. A little low relative to the others, but okay. Debts, 353 for a total net worth of 426. Very impressive already. Let's take a look at the income. Gross monthly income. Whoa. Okay, so one partner earns a lot more than the other one. Like more than five times more. We have one person earning 3,000 bucks a month. The other earns 16,000 doll. Maybe one of them is in school. Could be. That would be my guess. Although at 29, maybe grad school, total household income, $236,000. Great income. I'm thinking about why their savings is kind of low. It doesn't really particularly bother me, but I would probably have that number higher. Fine. Fixed costs are at 33%. Okay. That's one of the lowest numbers I've ever seen. Here they have mortgage. I mean, what do I care? All this is very affordable. If you're at 33%, you can do whatever you want. You got room to spare by having a really low fixed cost. In part because they have a really high income that allows them to have a lot of money to be able to put in different places. So I'm curious to see where they put it. Investments. Well, there you go. 28% of net. That's kind of good. That's great. When you have a really high income and or low fixed costs, you want your investment rate to go way up. That's because the price of bread doesn't change whether you make $50,000 or $500,000. Therefore there's. There's somewhat of a natural cap on your fixed costs. Netflix costs the same for everybody. Therefore, the higher your income goes, it becomes almost super linear, meaning your fixed costs become proportionally lower and therefore you have extra money. So it's your choice. But you should almost certainly be putting more money in your investments because you can afford to do that. You should probably also be spending more on guilt free spending, but you should definitely be investing more aggressively, which they are. Savings are. Whoa. Also at 28%. Okay. So basically they're just putting away a ton of money. Great. They could do this for a few years and then they'll be set. They could ease off what they call coast and then let that money just compound and grow and they could actually start to spend more. Which brings me to a concern I have. Are they actually spending on guilt free money? Let's take a look. Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. So by spending so aggressively in savings and investments, meaning putting that money away, I wanted to see if they have a healthy amount of spend. And it's pretty low. It's pretty low. I was kind of wondering, like, why are we here? What am I going to talk to them about? And my guess is that they have an Inability to spend 11% is low for having a $236,000 income. You know, I talk about 20 to 35%. They could easily afford any of that. They've chosen to over index on saving and investing, which I totally respect. But 11% is unusually low. They have travel gifts and donations eating out in bars. I almost wonder if I even believe this. If anything, I suspect they're actually spending less on these things. That's just a gut feel because people who have their numbers in this way super heavily aggressively invested in saving, they tend to not be able to bring themselves to spend. And that means even if they tried to ease off of their saving and investing five or 10 years from now, they probably wouldn't be able to spend. So that's my guess what we're going to talk about. But never know until I meet him.

Carrie has a lot of fear around money. We've been talking about a trip to Japan and we're in the car together and I mentioned the trip to Carrie and she was like, I don't know. I don't think we have enough money to do it. My wife makes a lot more than me and kind of puts like a burden on me at home. She feels like I'm not contributing as much. It makes me feel bad about myself. And we have a lot of money, but when we talk about doing something that you know, is relatively affordable given how much money we have, like going to Japan, it's like yes and then no and then yes and then no. Because she's constantly worrying about, you know, the future. I can say here's what the numbers seem like they'll look like at when we're 60, but it doesn't, like really help with that. And in the end I was like, let me just apply it to Ramit.

So who was the one who brought up the idea of taking a trip there?

We've had this goal for probably like four years now with the goal of having kids in mind. Kind of like a last really big hurrah of we're gonna do something like really indulgent and an extravagant trip that we don't think we could do otherwise with a kid. Kind of like knock that off the bucket list before we, you know, really settle in.

Okay, sounds good. So what about the money part of it?

We save for a travel fund every month, but we celebrated our one year wedding anniversary this summer, so we spent a decent portion of that. But mostly we had a really large expense this year of renovating our kitchen and had to take from Our travel fund to be able to kind of finish paying that. So left us in a position that we don't have as much as we would have otherwise in the travel fund.

Can you afford the trip to Japan or no?

Right now we don't have the money to do it. May is when we're shooting to go. I think we can by May.

Okay.

Okay. You're waiting a few months to go to Japan. What's the big deal?

I think more balancing that cost with how we would use the money otherwise.

How much is this trip, by the way?

We've talked about budgeting, like, 10 to $15,000 for this trip.

15K. You're going to save up for a few months for it? Sounds good to me. What's the argument?

House expenses?

Should we spend 15k on something to renovate the house with, or should we take this trip to Japan? Is that the conversation? All right, so how do you go about making a decision like that?

I'm more of the. The warrior. Right. How do we justify the trip to Japan when we need to make sure that our house is, like, clean and safe and livable and healthy for us to be in? And those are expensive things to ensure.

And then, Dylan, what about you?

From my perspective, it's like we both have a conversation where we both say we have enough money to go to Japan. And then I'll bring it up a couple months later, like, oh, like, what month should we go to Japan? But she'll say, like, well, what about all the lead paint we have in our windows? Like, before we have a kid, we're going to need to get our windows renovated. It never occurred to me we need new windows to have a kid. But, like, I want the house to be so that Carrie feels like this is a safe, good place to raise a kid. It feels like we could spend a minimal amount of money to make the house ready to have a kid. It doesn't feel like this huge thing that will keep us from, like, having fun.

Now. I'm kind of struck by the way we're talking about money right now. I'm a little surprised. Like, the way that you're talking about money, it's like the two of you make 50k a year combined. We're talking about a trip to Japan for 15k. So does it strike you as a little odd the way we're all talking about money right now?

To me, it's constant worrying. She's like, I could lose my job. So it's like we need essentially this gigantic emergency fund and a Big part of that is I'm in the PhD. Carrie's the primary earner and so she feels it's kind of on her. To me, it feels like way more stress and anxiety about the future, about relatively small things. I think we'd just be happier if like we did feel like we made over 200k.

How would you characterize the way that each of you feels about money?

I'd say uncertain. It doesn't feel guaranteed.

Okay, uncertain. What else?

I feel very privileged about our financial situation. I know that I should feel confident.

Don't tell me what you should feel. Tell me what you do feel. Worried.

Stressed, pressured.

Okay, that's pretty interesting. So you feel uncertain, privileged and worried. Okay, same question for you, Dylan.

I feel generally relaxed towards money. I don't like thinking about money, but I feel confident that I know how to think about money.

Oh, that's quite interesting. Who manages the day to day money in the household? Is it one or both of you?

I'm definitely the like, check the Monarch app, see what's what. Like every day I manage it more, kind of setting up like our bill payment, credit card payments, making sure that there's enough money where it needs to be to handle those expenses.

It's not surprising, right? You see so far what's going on. So Dylan's like, I feel super relaxed. I'm not really involved in the day to day. Carrie goes, I'm worried. I'm logging into my account every single day. What do you notice so far?

Yeah, I feel like it's on me to make sure the system is still staying afloat from an operational standpoint, but then also from a cash flow standpoint.

I personally wish that you could kind of feel more relaxed about money. I do appreciate the work that you do day to day to make sure everything is paid.

I like that we've got a balance of you're more relaxed and that helps with my less relaxed. But I do wish that I too was more relaxed and I think also more grateful instead of worried and confident instead of worried. But the worrying just really comes naturally to me. The relaxing does not come naturally to me. So it feels like a comfortable place to be. That's more of my safe space. I wouldn't know what being relaxed or confident about money even looks like.

Can you imagine for me for a second, Carrie?

Well, probably I'd feel happier. Like one of the things that I think I put on our conscious spending plan was wanting to do like workout classes. And so while we were doing it, I started googling Pilates classes in our town to see how much is that? And it was like $48 for a 45 minute class. I'm like, well, that's kind of ridiculous. But at the same time, I know that could be possible and could be comfortable from a financial standpoint if I chose that. And so I feel like being confident and relaxed about money. To me, looks like going to a $50 Pilates class and feeling happy about it.

What would need to change for you in order for you to feel happy and relaxed to go to a $50 pilates class?

Honestly, when I think about it, my head goes right back to like lead paint. I think about where that money would be spent otherwise.

Meaning if I spent $50 on myself, I'm not spending $50 that could be spent for lead paint, which is really for our unborn baby, which makes me, what?

A bad future mom.

Yeah. Wow. This is the ultimate in mom guilt. Someone who's not even a mom feels guilty for future version of mom. She's a guilty pre mom. Everybody give her a round of applause. So what do you think about that? It's funny, right? But it's something a bit dark about that.

Probably the reverse is also true that not choosing to invest in myself and my own happiness would also make me a bad future mom. To be a good mom in the future, I should focus on incorporating that into my life more now and have those habits built so that I can be a better parent in the future.

Sounds great, but spending 203, 400 bucks a month on Pilates, I mean, you could be investing that, you could be renovating that. How do you justify that?

You tell me, man.

I don't know.

I can't like, rationalize that because I know it's better to invest at the age of 29 than it is at the age of 35. The more I do now, the better it is later.

You're absolutely right. It is better to invest at 29 than 35. The difference can be, you know, somewhat large over 30 years. But when you get into the top 5%, top 2%, it can start to become unhealthy. Keep investing, Just keep maxing it out. More is better. What is an example where doing a little more is good, but you do way more and it turns bad?

Exercise, it's great for you. Exercise, even every day, probably good for you. But what about eight hours a day of exercise?

That's excessive. It's really going to deplete you.

Okay.

Any connection to money. Okay.

Yes, it is depleting.

It is draining and it's not just depleting on you. Right, let's look at Dylan. Dylan, this need to save almost everything, what effect does it have on you?

It's tricky for me because I basically took this really low earning job of a PhD or locking in for six years to do this thing. So it's like, you know, without Carrie, I'd be kind of living on ramen. But at the same time, we know what makes us happy together is to do things like going to Japan. Like that's really what strengthens our relationship and makes us feel really close to each other now. And I feel like Carrie puts so much pressure on herself to say it's all on me. What if we didn't achieve these big goals? Having a kid because I did this selfish thing. And it's kind of like that for so many things, it's exhausting. It drags me down and it also, it makes me feel guilty for doing the PhD. I know it's not true, but I feel like if I made more money, you know, carry stress and pressure would go away.

Just want to cut in here because it's great that Dylan thinks he can solve this problem by earning more money. He sees his wife stressing out about carrying the bulk of the financial burden for their lifestyle. And he believes that if he simply earns more, her stress and anxiety will go away. But I can tell you right now that probably wouldn't make Carrie feel much better even if Dylan earned the bulk of their combined income. Why? Because Carrie is a classic worrier. She said so herself. And for the worrier, money conversations are always negative. They worry about running out of money. They lie awake at night playing out worst case scenarios, compulsively logging into their accounts every day. And eventually they'll even worry about why they are worrying so much. They believe often that just this one thing will stop making me worry. But if you say really? They realize, oh no, I'm still going to keep worry. Now imagine being married to a warrior. You're seeing this playing out in real life with Dylan and Carrie. Every time money comes up, even when the topic is fun, like planning a dream vacation to Japan, the conversation naturally starts to center around fear. In this case, it's fear around being a bad future mom because there's lead paint on the windows and, and no amount of Dylan reassuring her will assuage her fears. Candidly, it can become exhausting. I've noticed this pattern and I developed specific advice for warriors and even for partners of warriors. In my new book, Money for couples. So if you want to learn more, go to iwt.com money for couples. We'll get back to their Money psychology after a quick break to support our sponsors. As you know, I'm in the education business. Not only do I teach, but I also learn and I like to spend money to keep learning in different ways. Courses, coaches, tutors, all of it. In fact, I believe that so much that one of my 10 personal money rules is I don't limit myself when spending on education. And I gotta tell you, I love finding new ways to learn from people who are at the top of the game. Which is exactly why I love using Masterclass, the sponsor of this week's episode. With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best. Masterclass is the only streaming platform where you can learn and grow with 200 plus of the world's best for just 10amonth. An annual subscription with Masterclass gets you unlimited access to every instructor. For example, one Masterclass that I loved was a screenwriting class from Aaron Sorkin who created one of my favorite shows, West Wing, and every membership comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. One of my favorite parts of Masterclass is all the variety. They have chefs, screenwriters, designers, everything you can imagine in Masterclass. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at MasterClass.com Ramit that's 15% off at MasterClass.com/Ramit MasterClass.com/Ramit this episode is sponsored by Element, a delicious electrolyte drink mix with zero sugar. Now I get lots of DMs about element. We've been working with them for a while. Check out a few that I recently got. Sarah says. I've been using it for three years. It changed everything for me. My energy is better, I have less headaches. I love it. Victoria says. I want to thank you for recommending Element. I used to get crazy leg cramps after I exercise and no sports drinks I tried helped. Except for Element. Now I don't get cramps at all. Thanks for sending in your feedback, Sarah and Victoria. Each stick pack of Element delivers a meaningful dose of electrolytes free of sugar, artificial colors or other weird ingredients. And they are the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA weightlifting and many Olympic athletes. Plus, for a limited time you can get Elemnt's Chocolate Medley, designed to be enjoyed hot during the cooler months. Get your free Element Sample Pack with any purchase@drinkelement.com ramit and try it totally risk free. If you don't like it.