“We argue daily b/c he can’t stop talking about Ramit”

Nathan is more of a like, I want to get this done really quickly. He's a list doer, so he wants to check things off of his list.

I'm very analytical, want to make sure that the money that I calculated in our retirement is going to meet the goals that I have for our family.

Nathan is a 35 year old dentist, and he's the ultimate warrior.

I have insecurities, and I think that that's why I'm always looking for validation.

Linda is 37 years old, and she spends a lot of energy helping Nathan feel okay about their finances.

We're very stressed about money just because we can't spend the way that we used to. It's been a big change. So I think we do carry like anxiety and stress.

But Nathan's constant optimizing is causing arguments between him and his wife. His anxiety has gone through the roof and he's desperate to get my take on their finances.

I move the goalpost, we make a decision, and then I learn some new bit of information. And then I go back.

And Linda, she just wants Nathan to chill out.

I think we both prioritize different things. I want Nathan to feel more secure. The decisions that we've made as a family.

Can Nathan and Linda get on the same page and see the actual amazing reality of their finances?

What you call research is really just worry disguised as homework. It just adds more and more stress because again, stress is life.

I thought, like, man, I'm just really well prepared. And then when you come in, you're like, you're nuts.

All right, we have Nathan and Linda say, we bought a new house and now our mortgage has doubled. Expenses the same, and he won't stop spending. We'd like Ramit to help us with our conscious spending plan to see where we can cut. We are unable to stop talking about money every day. Huh? Why? Oh, we have talked about Ramit for the last three weeks nonstop. Fantastic. What's the problem? I don't see any problem here. Why don't we take a look at the CSP? What? Assets, $2.3 million. Why do they sound so alarmed already? What the hell? Why does this happen to me every time? In their 30s. All right, investments, $694,000. By the way, their CSP has a lot of writing on it. Like, a lot. You find this with people who they really feel the need to get every detail out. I'm like, it's supposed to be a spreadsheet with a few numbers, not a freaking essay. On the right side. Savings, $79,000 debt, 1.5 million. Okay. It says their business and their home. Interesting. And then worth 1.5 million. Very good at in their 30s. Okay, let's take a look at the income. $30,000 a month. Okay, so $365,000 a year. What? Fixed costs are at 76%. No way. It's one thing if your fixed costs are 62 or 63% when you have a household income of $55,000. Right. Things are expensive. Bread would be proportionally expensive if one of you is making $20,000 a year. But making $365,000 a year and having 76% fixed cost, that's typically overspending. This CSP has people's fingerprints all over it. And what I can already tell is that because they have so many categories, explanations for every single line, they are way deep in the weeds, and they are missing the big picture. Like, their CSP is basically double the length of every other CSP because they just added a bunch of stuff. Maybe I need to lock the CSP so you can't add any more rows. I never had this situation before, but I think we need to make a change. Okay, I have a note from my producer. Ask them how many times they applied to the podcast. All right, we'll find out. This is a very interesting csp, but I feel like I'm gonna have to be pretty direct on today's call. Let's see what happens.

I was sitting in my basement just alone, and, you know, I had heard about you, and so I applied, and then I applied in her name, and then I played in my name again, and I played in her name. And I don't know, I just thought the more times I played, then your team would be like, you know what? This guy's serious. We would love to have him on our show.

How many times did you apply?

I think, like, eight.

That's kind of weird, right?

I am quirky like that sometimes. And then I take Joy. And if I have a goal in mind, I have always pushed really hard to get it, and I was trying to create my own.

Are you impulsive?

No. Oh, wow.

Look at the body language. He says no. She's nodding furiously. So you filled out the application and spoke to my colleague and Linda. What did you think of this?

I want Nathan to feel more secure in the decisions that we've made as a family. I think he's lost a little bit of faith in us, especially since we moved, and so I'm here to support him. I hope that this helps him get some faith back. Because history has shown us that we do sort of have faith in each other. But, you know, the last six months has been a big change for us, so I think we've lost some of that.

Okay, let's talk about what happened six months ago.

We bought our dream house, okay, at a 7% interest, and we had a 3% interest in our old house. So it did. It's a different monthly payment going into buying the plant, the house. We came up with a strategy because we knew that interest rates would eventually come down. And we talked with lenders and came up with a plan of refinancing. So we took out a loan that you could refinance. So we're just waiting for the interest to come down. And once we get to our goal, we'll save about fifteen hundred dollars a month on our mortgage, and that will get us to a place where we feel more comfortable. We're savers, and I'm used to saving more. And so I think when we look at, like, what we're saving now versus what we used to save, it's different.

When you say you're a saver, finish the sentence for me, I'm a saver. And if I'm not saving, then I am.

What if I'm not saving, I don't have money for my kids college and have retirement money and savings for house projects. If we're not saving as much as we used to, then we just can't do the things that I have in my mind. And it's just an adjustment.

Nathan, do you agree?

We came together. We go, look, we'd like to move out of our neighborhood. We like to, you know, this is going to be a bigger house and it's going to be a bigger mortgage. And I think that in the time, I'm like, yeah, I think, like, that's what we want to do. And then, so we, we make. We make the move, we buy it. And then I hear, you know, I'm doing research and I, you know, see one of your podcasts that says, hey, this is how you can figure out if you can afford a house. And then I go, oh, shoot, Linda. Like, we didn't look at that. We didn't calculate that. And then I get nervous. I go, hey, do we even look at this? Did we do this? And then I freak out a little. And she was like, look, we were embarked on this together. And now you're kind of moving the goalposts on us. And that's where we argue, and that's Where I think that she goes, hey, you've lost faith in us. Because, look, I know our finances too. We don't do it the same. You're reading Ramit's book, you're doing all these things, and how I get there is different than how Ramit or you are getting there.

Is. Is your fight about me. That's what it sounds like.

Well, every. Like every night after the kids go to bed, he's like, okay, let's talk about our rich life as it pertains to vacation in the next five years. And while I like that, it's not, he wants to talk about our rich life often. Okay, but Nathan, one thing you said is we did have a financial advisor that we talked to prior to buying this house that gave us a max mortgage, and we're actually lower than that. So I think he sometimes forgets that we have, you know, talk to experts about smart financial decisions. We haven't made our decisions in a vacuum.

And a good decision involves lots of different inputs, not just one, not just one person, not just one book. Lots of different perspectives, and then ultimately, you decide what's right for your individual situation.

I have a comment to make, and it's not going to be the one you think. You know, lots of people make an impulsive decision to buy a house, and then they dive in headfirst to much larger costs as they freak out because suddenly they. They don't have anything left over at the end of the month, which happened because, you know, they didn't run the numbers before they made the biggest financial decision of their lives. But that's not what's happening here. Nathan and Linda did run the numbers. They even spoke with a financial advisor who gave them the go ahead. And so everything was seemingly fine until Nathan found new information. My book, my podcast. And that has him second guessing himself. My first thought is that Nathan is impulsive. My clues are that he applied almost 10 times to my podcast because he's questioning everything based on reading some new book, and because he's treating the idea of a rich life as a task that should be talked about every single night. Nathan even sent this email to my team after applying several times in less than a week, basically asking how he should tailor his application so they'll get picked. Now, this is the beginning of a real problem, because there will always be new information that contradicts a decision you make. I constantly get messages in Instagram and other DM platforms with people saying, what do you think about this thing? What do you think about Apple Credit card, they're going to constantly be second guessing themselves for the rest of their lives. What you really need to do is to develop a deeply rooted confidence in your decision making. And you get that confidence through competence. Now I have to say I'm also curious about Linda's reaction to Nathan.

Linda, the way you talk about this situation feels very casual, like ah, you know, we got a bigger house and we kind of knew it going in and like, yeah, it's just an adjustment for us. There's that. And then Nathan sounds a little bit more like I'm freaking out a bit. I didn't run the numbers properly. Now I'm not sure. Okay, there's that and then there's the application. On the application. 1 out of 10, how serious is this? 8. We have talked about Ramit for the last three weeks nonstop. We keep fighting because of it. What's going on here for me?

We need to rein back our spending. We were able to buy whatever we wanted when we were in the last house until we can kind of go through our financial plan which is going to take about a year until like interest rates come down. From the time we bought the house, we have to be more conscious of it. And I think sometimes Nathan is more of a, like, I want to get this done really quickly. He's a list doer, so he wants to check things off of his list. And I don't know that we can do that as much. So we do conflict sometimes about that.

What do you think, Nathan?

I'm very analytical. Want to make sure that the money that I calculated in our retirement is going to meet the goals that I have for our family. Part of the reason that I get nervous. So I don't know if this is just me or not, but as somebody who is a minority in US culture, especially an Asian male, Asian American, I have insecurities and I think that that's why I'm always looking for validation.

That's pretty insightful. Okay. I appreciate the self awareness. Linda, does that strike you as true?

I think we're very stressed about money just because we can't spend the way that we used to recently. Like I will say that I was not as conscious about our spending when we were in the last house because we could afford to not be.

This sounds like every American, like literally this is the American story. O It was the two of us, maybe a little baby and then we were living large. We rented or we had a small little house. We would eat out and we would travel and it was fantastic. And then we got a big house because we're Americans, and then, oh, we can't spend all the money we used to because we have to repair our basement. Is this not the classic Americana story?

Yes, but we're in the suburbs now. We are on a tree with a bunch of kids. Like, we plan on staying here forever, right? So we're, like, sort of cultivating a childhood for our kids.

There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying it's not that surprising. Like, of course you can't spend as much. You bought a much bigger house at a much higher interest rate. It's like, yeah, what's the surprise here?

How stressful it would be to step back.

So it's been harder than you thought to cut back on spending? Okay. Nathan is saying I need validation. I'm not sure if we have made the right decision. Right. What else?

I think we both prioritize different things. Like, my focus is more getting the kids what they need, and his focus is getting the house what it needs. And so between the two things, we're, like, trying to take care of things on our different paths, but then small ticket items that add up and are harder to cut.

Like what?

I just bought a backpack for my son because he needed a backpack to go to school.

How much was the backpack for your little one who's what, four years old to. How much was it?

$40.

And what about you, Nathan? What are you spending money on?

Most of the stuff is kind of for. For a house or. Every once in a while, I like to, you know, play some golf for our lawn. I was getting fertilizer. I was getting mulch. And the mole traps.

How much are these mold traps? I have to know for a two pack?

It was 50 bucks.

Two pack is 50. Okay. And how many of those do you need to get?

2.

2 or 3. So hold on. You have to talk to someone who doesn't know any of the words we're using right now. How often do you have to get these?

If you notice you have mole activity, you. You get them once and you can reuse it.

All right. I'm gonna get roasted so hard online. Ramit Sethi doesn't know about mold.

It wasn't. It wasn't the cost of the mole trap to me. It's the mindset around spending. We already paid the mole people to get rid of the moles.

Wait, okay, hold on. Are we talking about M O, L D, like dog or mo L, E, E, E?

Like moles in the backyard?

Like the little mole animal oh, my God. Okay. Wow. This is hilarious. Moles. Who knew? All right, okay, so you don't like that he's being wasteful by buying duplicate mole traps. Nathan, do you, like, feel any particular way about her purchases?

She really likes to do Ridwell, which is sustainable recycling, and she likes to buy organic for groceries. And for. For the longest time, you know, with our grocery bills being. Being higher and those. Those things, I. I don't love it. I always say, like, do we have to get these things? Like, I feel like we can get a broccoli that's not organic, and we're just gonna be just fine. Okay, so. And so she gets upset that. That she's like, this is really important to me, like, eating, you know, what she says is healthy, which, you know, I. I agree to a certain degree, but when it hurts, bottom line, sometimes I go, look, that's something that we can. We can cut out.

Do you all have an agreement on how much you should be spending? Like, basically, do you use a csp?

We know what our budget is, and. And we have lowered our monthly grocery bill by, like, $200 a month doing that.

Oh, wow. 200 bucks. The magic number. I appreciate that. That's a great example. I'm not making fun of you. I appreciate it because pretty much everyone who comes on here can lower their grocery bill, and everybody plays the. Oh, there's no way. Ramit Sethi's so out of touch. When was the last time you shop for? I go, look, nobody even knows their numbers when they go to the grocery store. If you literally just say, I want to save 50 bucks, you can save 50 bucks. Almost everybody at the grocery store. That's pretty cool. You set a goal, you save 200 bucks. That's awesome. I appreciate it. I think we need to just look at the numbers, honestly. So first of all, who. What was it like filling out the CSP together?

I mean, we talk about money a lot, so I think it was just like getting it down on paper.

And who wrote all the words on the CSP?

Nathan.

Nathan. What the man. You wrote 400 paragraphs. I'm like, no wonder they don't feel good about money.

Okay, I just need to explain what I'm seeing here. Without even reading a single number on their csp, I can see clear as day that Nathan and Linda are over complicating their finances. There are a hundred notes in the margins. A CSP is supposed to be simple. Nathan's explanation helps me understand that he's actually not just being impulsive. He's anxious and he's insecure about things beyond money. And his CSP is just a symptom. In fact, his entire financial setup is just a symptom. In the meantime, Linda seems okay with this, but I gotta tell you, I would not be. At what point do you actually start to feel good about money? Right now, my suspicion is that Nathan will never feel good about it.

Basically, part of the reason of wanting to jump on here, too, is so that I can get all this out and then I can go live my life.

Hold on. You guys talk about money every single day. You come home at night, you go, I'm tired. Let's talk about our rich life, right? What? Seems like maybe the issue isn't the csp, but something deeper.

I went over the CSP like, four times before this call, just making sure that everything was tight. Everything. I understood everything. But it's funny, I thought, to me, I'm like, man, I'm just really well prepared. And then when you come in, you're like, you're nuts. And I go, okay, yeah, I could see how that. That's.

Well, think about it. Do you start to see some links? So applying 10 times, writing, like, extremely exhaustive details. First of all, why is there a line item for a diaper when it's $100 per month? And then two, there's a description next to it, like, I don't know what diapers are. Environmentally conscious brand.

Oh, Nathan, I love you.

What's. What's the need to explain it all? Tell me about that.

Yeah, so I put on the diapers there because I noticed that we spend it regularly. Go. Oh, okay, so this is a fixed cost because we regularly do that. And then. And then as I was going down, I was like, well, is this. Should this all go under, you know, the 15% miscellaneous? And then. So I think I wrote the sustainability part because I would go to Costco and buy diaper. She wants to get sustainable diapers.

I think that the CSP leaves fingerprints of every person and couple that fills it out. Every couple fills it out differently. When I look at this csp, what do you think I see?

Anxiety.

Yes. Anxiety.

Yeah.

What else?

That's the big one.

Clinging onto every detail. Why?

I think we feel stressed right now with, like, we're not used to having to think about our spending. And so now that we do, I. It's been a big change. So I think we do carry, like, anxiety and stress.

When we first met, I was thinking about spending all the time. You know, I still Think about spending all the time. And, and it's funny because my parents are like, why are you so stressed all the time? Like, because you made me stress. They came from Vietnam during a war time. They, all they had was the degrees on their back. And they go, look, you get ahead in your life because of your degrees. They can never take that away from you. And then, but now they're like, why are you so stressed? And. Or they go, hey, we didn't teach.

You to be cheap.

We teach, we taught you to be frugal. And it's just, I think it's funny, like I'm a product of you guys.

So yeah, it's true. You are a product of them, of course. But you also get the chance to turn the page to the next chapter of your life.

I know I'm thinking small. I want to think big and I want to get better at it. I, I think where I, I appreciate myself is like I'm, hey, you know, I've done therapy. I do, I'm always looking to continue to improve. And I think, but partly with my insecurity of doing the right thing, you know, I might take it too far sometimes.

I appreciate that. I think you're pretty self aware. I mean, I, I think you have both hit upon what this CSP reveals to me. It reveals anxiety above and beyond everything else. And that is manifested through like, the CSP is easily double, two to three times longer than anyone else's csp. Okay, way too many categories. It's overly precise when that's not the point. Anxiety causes you to go deeper and deeper and deeper into the weeds to look for precision. As if the meaning of life is to get more precise on your csp. That's not the meaning of a rich life. The meaning of a rich life is, is to design it and then to use your money to live it. It will be very difficult to live a rich life if you are constantly down in the $3 weeds. Okay, so that's the first thing it reveals. Second, it reveals micromanagement. Like if we control everything, then nothing will get by us. Almost like trying to stop the ocean from flooding by holding your arms out. Can never happen. And three, it just reveals chaos. To me, when I think of calm, cool and collected with money, I think of someone who's fluid. They know their numbers. What's our income? What's our net? Are we saving enough? What's our savings rate, investment rate, asset allocation? When are we going to be a million? Those key numbers and the rest of it, we can Be fluid. We can have it live somewhere but not have to control it all the time. How does that strike you, Nathan, when.

I don't have that control over those numbers, I don't want to wake up and be like, oh, my gosh, I didn't put enough into BTS ax And, you know, I missed out on. On this opportunity. The last three years, we had a financial advisor who was doing 1%. And then, you know, lo and behold, I read this book, don't do 1%.

I'm like, oh, my gosh, I need.

To take back control of my money, because that's what happens if I. If I let it coast. Things like that slip by me. It could be Asian culture, too. They go, look, if you're in control of everything, you're not going to miss anything.

You notice what just happened there? What did I say first? And then what was your response?

How do you feel about this? And then I went into a holster.

I want to kind of try to recalibrate the dynamic right now. What might be another answer you give me.

Before we hear his answer, I need a quick favor from you. If you're enjoying this show, please hit the subscribe button. It really helps me and my team.

I didn't think about that. That's something I can try.

Nice. Here's another alternative answer you might give. Oh, my gosh, I never thought about it like that. Now that you pointed out fixed cost area is that I feel I have to control everything and not worry about those things that I used to worry about. You see the difference in that answer?

Yeah. It's looking ahead and not looking back. Like you said, what's so tough is it's just not natural for me to do that.

Just because something isn't natural. It's not natural to ride a bike the first time. It's not natural to eat ceviche. Whatever. And what might be a different way to say it is, wow, here's what I could try. Going forward doesn't mean you have to get it perfect. It's just, here's what I could try. And it just totally re characterizes the way that you're talking about yourself. You're not stuck in the past. You define your future. All right, let's look at this. Let's look at the numbers in the csp. So here we go. Linda, why don't you read the word in bold and then the full number next to it.

The assets are 2.3 million. Investments are 694,000, savings is 79,000, and debt is 1.5 million total net worth. 1.5 million.

Okay, 1.5 million in your 30s. How do you all feel about that?

This is why I say, like, I feel like we've lost a little bit of faith because we've gotten here, we've done the work, and I think sometimes I sort of have more faith and I'm more emotional about some of our decisions. And Nathan is more analytical, so he can sometimes struggle that if I don't do, like, all the big, long calculations.

What was my question to you, Linda?

I feel good. I feel good about it.

Why do I have. Why do I talk to every depressed millionaire in the country on the show? What the is wrong with everybody? Linda, did you notice what you just did?

Downplay that where. That we have that much money?

Yeah. And what else. What did you do instead of looked at a problem? Yeah. You're the typical American living in the suburb who has a lot of money, and somebody goes, oh, my God, what a beautiful kitchen. Oh, well, you know, the problem was the calacatta marble from Italy. It's so crazy how long it takes. They're trying to give you a compliment. $1.5 million in your 30s. And the question is, how do you feel about that? Let's try it again, Linda.

I feel good. We worked our off for that.

Oh, that's a good answer. Okay, Nathan, how do you feel about that?

And I'm unsure.

Okay, that's honest. Go on.

It's partly because of the. The world we live in, and it's, you know, always getting more and more so. 1.5. You know, I know that that's like, more than, you know, a lot of. A lot of people, but is that enough? For what? Is that a good start for where we want to take my rich life? Basically.

All right, listen, I'm well aware how absurd it sounds for millionaires in their 30s to talk about how unsure they are if they have enough.

And yet this is real.

A lot of people don't have that kind of money, but they believe that some magical day when they have more, they'll suddenly feel good about it. As you heard on this show, just having more money does not change how you feel about it. There are also a lot of people with money or a house or a beautiful family who still worry. That's not stupid, and that's not absurd. That's human. I think it's a beautiful thing to listen to people's worries, to meet them where they are, and in some cases tell them, hey, your feelings might be real, but they are out of sync with reality. And that's the last tactic I want to point out to you. You'll notice that both of them answer in terms of problems, often in terms of the past. How do you feel? Well, it's okay, but I'm not sure it will be enough. And when I was younger, I always thought sometimes the best thing you can do is to notice your thought patterns and your speech patterns and change them because our language often becomes our destiny. Like this, they might say, I'm really.

Proud of how far we've come.

I still feel anxious about my future.

But my top goal right now is.

To appreciate where we are as a family.

You struggle to connect to your feelings, Right? Yeah, yeah, I get it. As an Indian guy, like, I totally get it. Somewhat similar upbringing, I'm sure. Not really talk taught about how to connect with our feelings. I noticed because when I ask you how you feel, you give me a thinking answer. In fact, you pivoted to, are we going to have enough? Which is a mathematical question. Talk about this with your therapist.

Yeah, I mean, what just came up to my head was you come home one day and you get an A minus. And your dad's like, why didn't you get an A?

Yeah, happened all the time. I'm sure we both know a lot of people who grew up with similar upbringings, right? Parents, kind of like A plus. That's expected, all that. It's interesting that some people take well to that, right? And they're like, yeah, I like to work, or I have high expectations, whatever. And I think one of the things that I hear from you, you told me, is I constantly need reassurance that I'm doing right, which I'm 100. Sure traces back to, you know, childhood.

You know, talking to therapists. It's definitely always the central part of me that we talk about. And in a lot of times, they go, hey, look, you're enough.

You are enough already. Without even looking at all the millions of dollars you have. You don't believe it, though.

He also doesn't believe it. If I am the one that tells him he needs to hear from somebody other than me.

Hearing stuff from your loved ones, you're like, yeah, you're my loved one. You have to tell me that when you hear it from other people, it's. It's different.

What Linda said is really interesting. Like, she may have the exact math that I have, but you're not going to listen unless you hear it from, what, a financial advisor? A guy who wrote a best Selling book, et cetera. And, you know, while it's cool we get the chance to talk in life, ultimately what makes you successful is to be able to parse what's going on and then make most of the time the right decision for yourselves. It's like, hey, if we compound $1.5 million for 40 years or 30 years, how much will we have? What does the calculation tell you? Will you have enough?

It says around anywhere from the sites, I've gone 7 to 9 mil.

Is that enough right now?

I'd say no.

Okay. All right, what is the number? That's enough. Is there a number.

Probably like 10, 11.

Okay, what's the difference between 7 and 10?

So what I've tried to do is calculate, okay, what is college going to be for? For my kids. So I go two kids. I want to have the option to pay for my kids college that they need it. I guessing they're going to have two kids each, so that's four kids. Want to give them a little nest egg that they need it. I want to give my kids some down payment for a house if they need it. You know, honestly, there's things that my parents were able to do as refugees. Like, you know, I. I am sad or nervous that I won't be able to necessarily do the same things that they are able to do for their three kids.

Linda, what do you think hearing it?

I have faith that we will be able to sort it out. Right. Like, yeah, you try to make the best decision with the information you have at the time, but if you make the wrong decision, I think we've proven over the past eight years that we've been together that we can fix those decisions. And so I struggle that he doesn't have that same faith and that he carries so much anxiety about all of these things because I don't necessarily agree that we won't be able to provide all these things for our kids and grandkids.

All right, I'm just writing down a few words I just heard from you. I just want to point something out. We're sitting here talking about your csp. We haven't even gotten to the income yet. The words that you both use to describe the current situation is sad, struggle, lost faith, and don't have confidence. We're all looking at the exact same numbers. And this is the beautiful and confusing part of money psychology. We are all looking at the same numbers and all three of us see something completely different. How can that be so?

Part of it is that we've been maxing out everything that we can for the past couple of years, and we are not currently maxing those things out.

And if you're not maxing things out, it makes you, according to your own definition, as a saver. A what?

I don't know.

A failure. Think about it.

When we were maxing everything out and we were, like, doing everything we should, Nathan was not as riddled with anxiety about it as he currently is. But since we've stopped doing what we're used to and we're focused more on more short term gains than long term gains, I think it's been a struggle.

Give me an example of what happened.

Nathan spends a lot of time in the conscious spending plan, but then I don't necessarily think when he, like, hits a button on Amazon, he's consciously spending.

He loves the conscious spending plan, but he also loves spending unconsciously. Okay, go on.

In this, like, coming year, we sort of made the decisions we made in order to get our forever home and build this life for our children. So we have to, like, be more conscious of what we're buying and be more aware of where we're putting our money and, like, focus on the things that are really important.

You guys are not getting the point. You're stuck in the weeds. You're stuck in the tactics. We are three of us looking at the same exact numbers. One of us, Nathan, is going, this is a disaster. I'm worried. I'm stressed. How am I going to have enough to pay for my great grandchildren's college graduate school? Like, there's no way. I'm sad that I can't do it. Sad. That's the word you use, Nathan. Sad. Talking about $1.5 million net worth in your 30s. I'm sad that I can't do something for people who are not even born yet. Your kids. Kids. I'm not kidding. This is. This is what you said. Then we have Linda, who's going. Well, he worries a lot. We are spending a lot. And it's stressful. And, you know, we spend. He's spending unconsciously. Okay, so there's that. It's like a lot of, like, he, he, he. It's good, but it's also bad. And then there's me going, what the is going on right now? Like, when I calculated this, I easily calculated $11 million at retirement. Like, I didn't even do anything. I just plugged in the exact numbers you have, and it's 11 million. I didn't even talk about your assets. Selling your assets, that's way more money too. 11 million bucks. And I go, yeah, your spending is a little high, but there's some obvious reasons why we can fix that in 10 minutes. But here's the point. You are looking at the world through a set of lenses, Nathan, where you are always exclusively going to see the downside. Like, you could have $20 million right now and you would not be happy. You would be worried. What would you be saying at 20 million? I don't know. There's a lot of risk. We're paying too much in investment fees. What about our kids? Trusts, costs, a lot of money. And the question I have for you is, do you want to go the rest of your life feeling bad about your money?

No.

Are you sure?

Possibly. Okay.

Who are you if you're not worrying about money? I'm.

I'm lazy. I am somebody who's not striving to be better.

Yeah. Because in your mind, the opposite of worrying is lazy. Linda, what is it for you? The opposite of worrying is what?

Relaxing?

Yeah. That's how it is for most people, Nathan, the opposite of worrying is relaxed, calm. But for you, because you. You not only were raised worrying, probably, but you have now come to actually thrive on it. Like, think about it. You come home from work and you go, CSP time. I'm worried. And it gives you that feeling, doesn't it?

Like, I have a purpose.

I'm worrying. And now you're not just worrying for yourself. You're worrying for your family and your great grandchildren. I'm worrying because that's what I do as a man. That's my job, is to worry and provide for five generations forward. But if I took away the worry from you, then who? What would it leave?

Vulnerability. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm totally exposed now. This is who I am.

Is this.

Yeah. Is this good enough?

I'm going to cut in here because this is such a powerful statement. If I take away the worry, is this good enough? Am I good enough? I think most of us feel this in some way. I know I do. If I wasn't a CEO, who would I be? What if I wasn't a husband? What if I wasn't in shape? What if I wasn't known online? Who would I be? And if you really twist the knife on that starts to feel very uncomfortable. Nathan takes his anxiety and he redirects it to working harder. And in a way, that's constructive. Which is why optimizers like Nathan can often get lost in their optimization. They justify it. They say, hey, me being in Control has gotten me good results. So I'm going to get more in control and therefore I'll get more good results. But there's a problem. You can't control everything. In fact, the more you do, the more you start to lose a sense of what's truly important. When I started my business, I was a control freak. A lot of entrepreneurs are. In fact, I told myself that a lot of entrepreneurs are control freaks. Hahaha. Who became a half joke to me. I obsessed over every tiny detail. I wrote every email, every Instagram caption. And as my business grew, I couldn't keep up worrying about the small details. There just weren't enough hours in the day for me to obsess over every single social media caption and email everything. And I had to systematically strip control away from myself. And my team certainly helped. They told me over and over for years, you shouldn't be doing this anymore. And it took a long time. And that is what allowed my business to grow. It also allowed me to focus on the bigger picture. And frankly, it allowed me to have more fun. My challenge here is to help Nathan see that there's a better future ahead, One in which he can willingly give up control because he's earned the right to.

Who am I if I'm not worrying about money?

What I want is, when I'm not worried about money, I can be out of my head. I can be joyful.

That's powerful. It's really powerful. I've seen this meme online about someone who is in a prison. But the prison, I think is coming from their own brain. Right. They've created. And the prison has a door. They can just walk right through it. But because it's coming from their own brain, they don't realize it feels very much like that's what's going on here. You see the same way.

It's definitely exhausting in my head. I want to, you know, break from shackles so that I can just be relaxed.

Yeah.

Because I know at my core, like, at my core, it's Sunday mornings, I'm feeding my kids or dancing to music. We're just having an awesome time. Awesome time. And then, you know, somewhere around 12 o' clock hits, I'm like, okay, what do I need to be doing? We gotta worry about the house. We gotta do all these things. I can't just sit on the couch and just watch Netflix.

This is like the Asian Cinderella. Like at the clock strikes 12 and then you start going like, what do I need to worry about? Pick up the broom. I need to do this. I need to recalculate the CSP and run a compound interest calculation. Like, damn, all my Asian friends are like, yeah, me too. But like, it doesn't have to be that way. Let me give you an example from my own life. I set my life up so that I'm not really worrying about money. What do I mean? Day to day bills are paid automatically. When I make a big purchase, I take a lot of time to research it. I carefully consider can I afford it, things like that. And I buy below my mean. I spend time, a little bit of time on monitoring stuff like a monthly meeting. Occasionally I log into my accounts just to look at, you know, the stock market, but that's about it. I have a lot of fun with money. I've built that skill. So I travel and I get clothes and whatever and I always connect it. So when I'm traveling, I'm like, wow, I'm so thankful to be in this beautiful hotel. And I think back to me starting to Invest at age 14, and I connect it. That money and that mindset is what allowed me to eventually be in this beautiful place at this time. What do you really want out of today's call?

To relax.

All right, I can help you with that. Do you truly want to change the way you interact with money? Yes.

I want to feel better about money and I want to change my relationship with it. I want to break away from kind of what I was taught in my, my money psychology that's been drilled into me. It's going to be hard, but I want to move forward and not backward.

Great. Let's go through the rest of the CSP and then we'll talk about how to do that. All right. Income. Nathan, go ahead and read this. Combined monthly income right here.

30,417.

All right, so you make $365,000 a year combined. Did you know that?

Yeah.

Great job. You take home 22, you're doing a bunch of pre tax investing, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your fixed costs are at 76%. What do you think about that?

I think it's high.

It's high. Okay. And why is it high?

Because of our mortgage and our daycare.

Yeah, it's those two things. But candidly, your mortgage is not that bad for your income. It's fine. You're at 23.3%. No big deal. It's your daycare.

Yeah.

It's 4400 bucks a month. That's a lot. Daycare is expensive. I'm sorry. You have to pay that much. But that's what it is. And how long will you have to pay that for?

2 more years with the big one, 4 more years with the little one. To me, it's like in the next year we're going to refi. So we're going to bring that mortgage down by like a grand at least. I mean, if we did it today, we, we'd be at least a grand in the positive. And then, yeah, daycare, I mean, we'll have before and aftercare, but we'll save about $3,000 a month when we do that. So I feel basically in my mind we're in the most expensive financial position because we're paying this daycare premium and this interest rate premium.

Yeah.

So if we were to take a hit on our retirement investment or college investments or whatever this year, I feel okay with it.

Okay. And Nathan, how do you feel about it?

I feel comfortable that that won't always be there.

Great. Okay, Both of you have a very healthy answer to this situation. I totally agree. I, I look at that, I go, all right, it is high. It's temporary. You know the exact month and year it's going to stop. As you put it, Linda, you are currently paying the most. You are going to pay. You could refi right now. Your daycare is going to go down and then way down. So your fixed costs, I can tell you right now, I don't have enough storage space in my raid array or whatever the hell to go through every category in here. Groceries, subscription, dad repayment for school, cleaner kids, swim, hardwoods. We have Linda, therapy. Linda, phone and gas, fine. Credit card, physical fee. Do you see this constant need to be overly precise? And because you spend all your time down in the weeds, which is exhausting.

Yeah.

You have no vision for how do we even have a lot of money? Like, when I ask you how do you feel about having $1.5 million net worth? You have no answer. Because you are obsessed with getting this precision down in the weeds. It's not serving you. Your Savings is at $1600 a month for general savings. And you have a healthy savings account at almost $80,000. That's pretty good. I think the problem comes at spending. So I think you both realize this, right? You actually broke out your guilt free spending. I mean, you really broke it out. We're talking $13 a month for a Christmas tree. The real problem here is not that you have like 50 line items. The problem is that you're spending $1,361. And if you factored it in, you'd be $2,000 a month short. As you wrote, that's a problem. So what do you all want to do about that?

Refinance our home. I mean, to me, it's like you. We sort of just have to ride this wave and be more aware of what we're spending on. And we might not be able to do the vacation this year, but next year, after we lower some of our fixed expenses, we'll have more on guilt free spending.

I feel like we're playing Jeopardy Tonight because every answer is the most American answer ever. Hey, we got a spending problem. What should we do? Refinance our suburban house. Wow. Ding, ding, ding. Every American's like, what? Why is this guy making a joke about it? What's wrong with refinancing? That's. They refinance all day long, never pay off their mortgage. Sure, you can refinance, but that's not. That's like a one off thing. And you happen to be lucky enough to be able to do it. Maybe it happens, maybe not. Whatever. What else? You want to cut back on your spending?

What I was wondering is, hey, can we not max out our investments? And so we're at 17%. Can we bring it down to 10 and still reach our financial goal?

Could you? What do you think about that?

When we bought the house, my strategy was, we buy the house, we don't save to Nathan's retirement for one year because I have an employer match. So we want to take advantage of that. And then once we refi and we have more money, we would start saving in Nathan's retirement again. And when we started this rabbit hole of conscious spending and all that, he sort of lost faith in that idea because he didn't feel like I did enough research on coming up with that financial strategy. And that if we didn't put the money in retirement now, you sort of lose that opportunity for the year of 2024. For me, I was like, well, this is our worst financial position. So in a couple of years, when we have more money, we could just put it in a brokerage account if we have that much extra.

All that sounds logical to me. Nathan, what was your. What was your response to Linda's suggestion?

I don't think we need to max it out. Okay. And then. So then I was like, okay, great, we can start spending a little bit more. And then Linda was like, well, now you need to rein it back in. Like, we don't have enough. Our rocket mortgage is saying that we're going negative.

I'M still a little unclear. So first Linda had this suggestion of like, hey, let's not max out our investments because we're living in the most expensive time right now. And then Nathan was like, I don't know about that plan because I've started using the CSP that. That makes me nervous. But then Nathan was like, hey, that actually might be right. Let me. Let's stop maxing out. And then Linda was like, hold on. You have not adjusted your retirement, so we're actually overspending, and that's where you are today.

Yeah, because he didn't adjust it back down. We're still putting the same amount in retirement.

Why aren't you at the same place? Both of you are like, we don't need to max out our investments.

Nathan wants to still max them out until maybe this conversation. I think you're convincing him that we might not need to. But yesterday he didn't think we were doing enough.

Nathan, you're operating on pure scarcity, and that is coming out in these very peculiar ways. One of the ways it's coming out is like, we need to max out our investments.

I thought compounding interest was one of the most powerful things. So if we missed out on that, then, you know, we miss out on accumulating wealth.

That is technically true. If you do not contribute X dollars for the year of 20, 24, 25, yet, yes, you will miss out on that compounding. And over 30 years, that will probably turn out to be a pretty decent amount of money. So what?

Yeah. Then going back to the failure thing, then we're a failure because we didn't get to where we were planning on getting to.

You already exceeded what you were planning. You already beat that number. The thing about scarcity is that people who have a scarcity mentality are very good at convincing themselves that they're not being scarce, they're just being careful. Like, we're young, we should max it out because it's compounding, etc. You have learned enough to be dangerous with investments. Compounding is powerful. You should try as much as possible to max out, especially when you're young. All those things are true. You're totally right. But because you are so in the weeds, you are missing the big picture of what is going on here.

Let me explain what just happened here. Nathan and Linda have high fixed costs.

And some of this is temporary.

Some of this is because of the new house. But they don't really understand the true picture here because they're so focused on the past, and they are Looking at the world through a pair of scarcity based lenses, they aren't accounting for how much they've already saved and invested. Instead, they're hyper focusing in the weeds. He's saying we need to max out investments for compounding. And she's saying when we refinance, everything will be okay. Yes, their mortgage increased, but the issue here is that Nathan and Linda haven't adjusted how much they're contributing to savings and retirement to offset their fixed costs. They plan to do that, but they didn't actually follow through. Why? Because Nathan is indecisive. You can see how these deeply rooted beliefs in ourselves, our insecurities, our lack of confidence, our anxieties come out and manifest in the most peculiar of ways. They did not adjust their spending.

Why?

If you trace it back, trace it back probably to his childhood. It has to do with insecurity and needing to be reassured and needing to be told that you are enough. But it's a very difficult way to live. Magic. Going to a restaurant, you order an omelet, but right before your food comes out, you see somebody else, you change your mind and Benedict, that sounds better. Can I have that instead? And just as you're getting your cup of coffee refilled, you go, ah, too much caffeine. Can I have an orange juice instead? You can't even enjoy what you're eating because you're wondering if you picked the wrong thing. Being indecisive is a terrible way to move through life. But as we can see here, the connections between what we are doing with our money and why are often very nebulous.

What is the big picture? Describe the situation happening in your family finances.

I'm spending so much of my energy doing one thing and at the end of the month our cash flow is negative.

Yes. Meanwhile, what else is happening?

Our investments are growing.

Yeah, but by how much?

By 7 to 8%.

Okay, so finish the whole sentence for me at this year, in my family, we are losing money every month. We're spending more than we make and.

We are gaining $70,000 in our investments every year.

Yes. Okay, so what is the logical conclusion?

Invest less so that your cash flow is positive or net neutral.

When I see a young parent or parents, I. I've always said, give yourself a little bit of room. If you're, if you have a 8% savings rate, bring it down to 5%, even 3%, even 1%. Just keep a little bit of money going, but for a couple of years, give yourself a little bit of ease. All I ask is that you make it systematic. So you sit down and you go, look, this is the kind of life I want us to live for the next four years. The next four years, I think we should spend more on X, Y and Z because we are busy babies, young school, childcare, all that stuff. So I want to do xyz. And after that, those expenses will go away and we will resume aggressive investing. What do you think about that?

I would like to do that.

What you wanted me to come on here and do is to help you analyze, make sure you're going to have enough for your family. Right. It's not the real problem at all. You can do the math yourself. When are you going to feel confident enough that you're doing the right thing, that you don't have to second guess yourself?

The answer is, you may never feel that way. But how I want to feel is, I want to feel, starting tomorrow, comfortable that way.

Okay. I like that. Love that. Now that is talking about the future, literally tomorrow. I love that. Good answer. Where is your therapy fee, Nathan? I don't see it in the fixed costs. Right.

The therapy was in the past, and then through my. My job, I was getting like, a free session every month.

Nathan, that is the most important expense on this csp, and you are literally being a cheapskate. What percentage of the time have we spent talking really about your mental health today?

The whole time.

Yeah. And. And yet there's literally $0 dedicated towards it. Explain that to me.

There's a phrase, show me someone's calendar.

And I'll show you their priorities.

My version is, show me someone's calendar and their conscious spending plan, and I'll show you their priorities. There are entirely too many people living in their spreadsheets who think they're one optimization away from finally feeling good.

You know what?

The truth is, most of them would get more benefit from going for a walk, for seeing a friend once a week, and probably talking to a therapist. Now, as a man with immigrant parents in the US I have a lot of compassion and for what Nathan is wrestling with. And I see a lot of similarities between how he grew up and how I grew up. And I've seen a therapist, and it's helped. One of the things I want to do on this show is to demystify mental health because it directly influences your rich life. Your rich life is not just about a bunch of numbers on a page. How many episodes do I have to show you to get you to understand that it is about so much more money? Yes. But also how you feel, what choices you make, your confidence, your ability to enjoy things. And one of those things is to know when to spend money to improve your life.

Think about it.

If your sink was leaking, you would call a plumber and you would.