“We spent $80,000 more than we made last year”

We've been following Susie Orman's advice on investing, and it was a disaster. And once we work with the FIRE movement, we thought, oh, well, we won't be able to retire early.

We tell people that our money story is that 18 years ago, we were $60,000 in debt. Now we have a $2 million net worth. Things have shifted, and that's why I reached out. We spent more money last year than we ever have before by 50% more.

Did you enjoy it?

Yes. And then I get scared later.

We don't have that much more time left.

Wait, I'm depressed. We're on our way to that old graveyard called death. So anyway, what do you want to do in our elderly age? God damn.

Meet Adrian and Rob. Adrian's 59. Rob is 62, and they are wondering if they will have enough. Enough to retire, enough to live the kind of lifestyle they want now. They went through quite a journey. They used to be in lots of debt. They made a plan, they paid it off, and now they have accumulated money. But they are scared. Especially Rob, who admits that he's been scared of money his entire life. In today's discussion, our sponsor is Facet. And as part of my conversation with Rob and Adrian, I asked Facet Advisors to take a very close look at their numbers so that we could get them some specific answers on if they will have enough and what their life will look like going forward. As we start this discussion with Rob and Adrian, something really interesting happens with one of my first questions. It's a little odd. See if you can spot it.

Money has been my purview in our relationship. I pay the bills, although the other automated things to you, but I show her where the money is every couple of months so she knows how to get it. All the accounts.

Okay.

But it's my thing.

Yeah. Well.

I just wanted. I kind of want to say that I started this money journey. I'm the one that was the catalyst for us going on a money journey. Before we were married, I was $35,000 in debt, and I was a massage therapist. And money is in math is definitely not my zone of genius. But I decided one day just to pick up some a Suze Orman book and just read it and start to understand what to do because I was in all this debt. So I had gotten myself out of $35,000 worth of debt. Rob and I decided to get married. And Rob said to me on the phone, I'm in $60,000 worth of debt. Do you want me to declare bankruptcy? Because it was the last year you could do it in a good way. And I said, no, let's pay it off. And so then I moved from California to Washington D.C. where he was living, and we just paid it off. So I just want to be clear that I started this journey. I'm the one that started it. I told Rob I wasn't going to marry him unless you watch Suze Orman with me every night. Every Saturday night.

How long did you watch Susie Orman together?

Nine years. Every episode?

Yeah. And I was shocked because I was like, I knew that since money and math is not my zone of genius. I was like, oh, I can understand concepts. And it took me a long time, but if I kept showing up, concepts became clearer to me.

Amazing. Great lesson for all of us. Money is not this mythical thing that only some of us have access to. All of us can become good at money. Okay, Adrian, I'm curious. Why was it important for you to tell me that just now?

Because I don't think it's fair to say that I am absolutely. My head is not in our money situation, that I know nothing about it. I do know what's going on, basically. So I guess that's where what I wanted to explain is that I do have some idea of what's going on.

So, Adrian, what would you say your role is in the relationship in terms of money?

I think my role is to stay the course with Rob and just keep us rowing in the same. Or keep both, or to keep us rowing in the same direction. Well, I don't know. I. I think also maybe just to keep everybody calm.

Are you second guessing yourself right now? Like, I. I feel like there's a lot of self editing going on. What is that?

I guess I'm feeling like maybe I haven't been as involved in our money as I was originally when we first started the journey. And so I feel a little bit bad about that. We did such a good job at saving and I felt like I was proud of us, so I wasn't really concerned as concerned about it. But recently Rob brought up to me this idea that maybe we're not doing as good as I think we're doing. So I guess, I don't really know. Maybe I'm just assuming that we're okay and maybe we're actually not okay.

Okay, I'm going to just pull this out right here. I've got 18 years worth of yellow sheets, which is our archaic way of determining our net worth. What we used to do this monthly, why we did, because that's how we started.

Rob, when you were filling this application out, where were you sitting?

At the same desk that I'm sitting at right now. Great.

What was going through your mind at that moment when you decided to write in and apply to speak to me?

I would say that my big issue has been worry, concern. I mean, being in debt at 44 years old was not a good feeling. And I have obsessed, I would say, in the last 18 years to dig us out of debt and put us into a place where we could retire potentially.

Okay.

And so I have been concerned since last year, which was the very first time we did not save money. Last year, we spent 80,000 more than we made. In spite of that, our net worth went up by $88,000, which was because of the investments and how well the stock market did last year. It was very surrealistic for me to be in a situation where every single year for the last 15 years, we have been raking it in, and then all of a sudden, my business has dropped off. We had some extra expenses last year, and the combination. If the stock market had broken even or whatever, if our portfolio had broken even, we would have been 80,000 in the hole. So that's the real catalyst for writing in early clues.

Did you catch them?

Rob is a worrier, and they're actually both worried about having enough for retirement since they are 59 and 62 years old. Last year, they spent more than they made for the first time, and yet their net worth increased. This is because of their investments. This really worries Rob. Actually, it would worry most people. And I noticed these very interesting dynamics as I asked Adrian what her financial role was, and she got quite defensive. Keep that in mind. Back to my conversation.

Well, I had just come home from being out with some friends, and I had paid for their dinner or their lunch, and Rob was like, why did this cost so much? I said, well, I thought we were doing Ramit's thing, and I wanted to be more generous in my rich life. So hold on.

How did he know that you paid for everyone's lunch?

He looked at the credit card.

Oh, like he logged on to the app or something like that?

Yeah.

So you walk in the door, and he's like, hold on a second. He just, like, logged onto the app?

Well, he had done it before I walked in the door.

Oh, okay. Hold on. Do you have notifications? Do you have notifications set up where every time someone charges, it gets sent to the phone?

No.

Do you literally manually logged in between the time she paid the bill and.

Came home.

I guess so. I don't keep track of how many times I log in. It's way too many times, I'm sure.

What did he say?

He said, why did this cost so much?

How much was it?

$79.

Okay. All right. I'm not laughing at the amount. I'm laughing because I've seen your CSP. Remember the phrase I have, like, focus less on $3 questions and more on $30,000 questions. Okay, so $79. What place did you go to, Adrian?

I went to a place called Mount Bakery.

It's a bakery. Okay, great. So you paid for a few friends. What'd you say? I'll get this one? Something like that.

Yes.

All right, cool.

Absolutely.

Why'd you do that, by the way?

I did that because we had been looking at your. About what does it mean to have a rich life? And I thought in my mind, it would be fun to be more generous. I thought this would be great. I'm going to take them out for lunch and have a great lunch together. So I did.

How did it feel when you paid the bill?

I felt happy about it. I felt like my heart could be open to people I love, and I felt like I got to experience a really beautiful lunch with some people, and I just really enjoyed it.

I love that.

Well, I think it was. Was it that? No, it was that night, actually. And Rob said, why did this cost so much? And I said, I thought we were changing what we were doing. I thought we were gonna start having our rich life. I thought we were gonna. And that was part of what I wanted in my rich life.

Okay, what happened next?

He just. He. I think he would just had a lot of fear reaction. It's kind of like, not fair, you know, why are you out there just spending money? I think that was really the gist of it.

Keep going.

I think it was different because I was just ushering in this sort of new idea around, what would it look like to have a rich life? I hadn't expressed it. I hadn't said, hey, you know, I think what I want to do is start being more generous. I probably could have expressed that earlier instead of just gone and done what I wanted to do.

I said, did you go to Mount Bakery and spend $79? I asked the question. I don't think I was accusing anybody of anything. I was just trying to find out why something that I thought 20 bucks would cost. 79 bucks. That's all.

What do you remember her saying?

She said she took her friends out to lunch and it's funny, that weekend was. I mean, there are so many instances that I look away. That weekend, Adrian was gone 12 hours a day, three days in a row, out with her friends in a dance conference. I was kind of alone at home, worried about our money. When I think about it now, I was in a scared place. So that's why that conversation occurred in the first place.

Got it. Okay. How did the conversation end?

I would say that at the end of it, I felt pretty bad about what had happened. Rob usually forgets about things just like that. And it just took me a couple days to feel okay around what happened.

Tell me more.

I felt like I didn't have agency in our relationship around money. I felt like that. And I mean, and I think part of that is because I haven't really made any money since the pandemic. So I've been a person who isn't contributing in terms of, like, our. Our finances since the pandemic happened. I was a massage therapist, and I kind of stopped at that point. And so I was feeling like I don't have a lot of agency in terms of our finances that, you know.

Like, you tried to do something, you spent a little bit of money, and then it caused this disagreement, blow up, fight.

And.

And what did that feel like to you?

I felt like Rob is really in charge of the money because he is the one that is looking at the money. He's the one that is making the money. He is the one that's doing all of the things around the money.

So is he in charge of the money?

I think in lots of ways he is, yeah.

Okay, what are the ways that he's not.

Okay, he's in charge of the money?

How does that feel to you to say? Doesn't feel like super easy for you to say. At least that's my perception.

I mean, I felt for most of our time together that we built this together, you know, that I started this money journey that I wanted it for, for us. And I was like, I just thought, let's give it a go. Because we started in our 40s and I didn't know what we could accomplish. I just thought, let's just see what we can accomplish. And I was always contributing as well, because I was making money. So I think it just has shifted a lot, you know, in terms of our power dynamics.

I guess it never feels easy when there's a recalibration of roles. Adrian, would you agree with that? And if so, do you think that it's still difficult for you to Recalibrate the financial part of your relationship with Rob?

Yes, I think it's definitely difficult to recalibrate. I mean, there's definitely. I. I'm curious to, to see if you feel like we're still heading in the right direction around our money. Because if it's important for me to start making more money or just need to start making money again, I'm certainly willing to do that. I think I've definitely struggled sometimes with worth and what it means. I don't believe that people's worth is money. I think we all have intrinsic worth. No matter what amount of money you have.

Keep going.

But, you know, I think our society at large does often like, equate money with worth. And so I think I fall prey to that once in a while as well.

Do you mean because you're not earning money?

Yeah, partly because I'm not earning money and partly because I've always earned a lot less. Yeah.

Okay, well, I appreciate you sharing that.

You know what?

I agree with both things. You said we should not be measured by how much we make. And yet society loves to prioritize numbers in a spreadsheet. How much is our paycheck? How's it stack up to somebody else? What's quantifiable? And it's a little, you know, people a little surprised to hear the money guy saying this. But there's so much more to a rich life than how much you have in the bank or how much certainly how much your paycheck is.

I gotta say, I totally understand Adrian's responses about her money role in their relationship. When she first said it, it sounded defensive. But now I think we can all see her perspective. She's the one who actually came to their marriage and demanded that Rob pay off his debt. She helped drive that. And now they did it. They've actually paid off tons of debt and they have accumulated a large net worth, which is incredibly impressive. And yet, because she doesn't earn as much money on paper, she acknowledges that he's the money guy in their relationship. And it's not fair that in America we see the amount of dollars as the supreme worth of someone. You can be earning $0 and still be an amazing partner, an amazing parent, or all the above. This is why I say that money is a small but important part of a rich life. It's not everything.

I went back to Rob now to.

Ask him about that $79 charge at the bakery.

That's okay. But if I'm at home alone, feeling scared about money, then it's not okay. Like then, then we have a disconnect. And so if I'm worried about whether our money is going to last 30 years, I'm thinking about that. Then I would say, yeah, like taking a bunch of people out who I don't know. Because you want to feel generous. It doesn't feel like it to me because I'm sitting alone. I'm sitting at home alone thinking about this money.

How long have you been worried about money?

I would say I've been worried about money for about 57 years. As soon as I became old enough, I really thought that our family was going to run out of money for food. He told me in her words that she was terrified. He said your father would go out and buy the. Buy these things that we didn't need. And I was terrified. My mom was a saver, my dad was a spender. She was scared. And I grew up scared thinking our money was going to run out. I remember writing something for school about how I felt like we were not going to have money for food.

Let's go back to you being 5, 6, 7, young. What do you remember your parents saying about money around the house?

There were probably some arguments, but there was no actual physical violence or anything like that. It was just something I could feel, you know, My dad was a sort of a domineering figure, kind of a scary person, moody person in the house. So we kind of all were on our toes, walking around in eggshells, watch out, you don't want to engage dad in a bad mood kind of thing. I don't remember. I mean, I think he liked to be a big shot, you know, and so he would take me to nice restaurants when I was young. I ate in some very nice New York City restaurants as a kid, you know, in the 60s, in the 70s. Yeah, we loved it. I mean, because then our dad was paying attention to us. He got to play the role of the big shot. Yeah, it was fun.

Let's move forward a little bit to your adolescence talking 12 to 16.

My parents separated when I was 15. They had a series of discussions and then announced they were separating. What I do remember about money around that era was that we were renting a three bedroom apartment. I have two brothers and a lot of my friends lived in the houses and their parents owned the houses, say a half a mile or a mile away. And so I was never really sure where we stood with money. Because if you're comparing yourself to your friends whose parents own a home, we're living in an apartment It's a nice apartment, and I'm not complaining about it at all. But that's what I remember about our finances back then.

What, as you got older, as you became an adult, did you go to college?

I did.

Okay. How'd you pay for that?

Tuition was much cheaper back in the early. In the late 70s and early 80s.

Wait, wait, wait. Just to make. Just to enrage everybody listening to this. Go ahead and tell everyone how much tuition was back then. Just tell them.

Well, my first semester at San Diego State in the fall of 1981, tuition was $205. Now, the couple of years before I transferred, I went out of state on the east coast, and my dad paid for it, and it was more expensive because it was out of state tuition for sure.

What was that like?

I don't remember.

If you say $400, I'm going to lose my mind right now.

No, I don't know.

It was crazy. It was 400 bucks a semester.

Yeah.

I don't know what it was, but my dad at that point was paying. Was paying alimony, and he wanted me to go to college, but was probably concerned about the finances. That's why he wanted me to move to California, where he was living, and pay the 205.

Gotcha. In his later part of his life, what was his relationship with money?

That is a hard story, my dad.

Just. Just point out before you begin your answer. Everybody just notice Adrian's nod there. Adrian clearly clued in on this story. This has clearly been discussed between the two of you.

Yeah, sure.

Okay. Go ahead, Rob.

Okay. My. My dad, who's a spender, remarried a woman who was a bigger spender, and that is a cautionary tale. He was making good money when he married her, but at some point later on in his life, he stopped making that kind of money. And she didn't stop spending what she was spending. And so they had some financial issues. In his later years, there was some real regret. If I get into the psychology of my stepmom, this could take a long time.

She's still around.

I believe she is.

You don't have a relationship with her?

I do not.

Okay. Did your dad tell you these things as he was older? Like, oh, I'm worried about money. What did he say to you?

I would say that he got sick when he was 59 and a half. Major bypasses, and that he lived to 72. He confided in me that he wished he hadn't sold his business right after he got sick. The business was kind of a cash Cow. And So the last 10 years were rough because once he sold the business, he never made the income again. And so they probably fought. You know, I. I can't imagine that it was easy. And there was some serious arguments over insurance policies and so on. That's why I don't have a relationship with my stepmom anymore.

A lot of similarities, Rob, between your dad and you. How often have you thought that you're going to die at age 72?

I've thought about that because I read somewhere that if your parents don't live to be a ripe old age, you don't have a model for living to that, you know, living that long. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to die at 72 because I think I've had a less stressful life. I've really worked pretty hard on my emotional well being.

What really stands out to me here is the role of myths and stories in families. Almost every one of us has a story that has been passed down through our family tree. Maybe it was about an uncle who was an alcoholic or an entrepreneur who made a bunch of money and gambled it all away, or someone who immigrated to a different country and paid for all her brothers and sisters to join her. Those stories are passed down in whispers and phrases. You know, people will say things like, just like your aunt, or she reminds me so much of Uncle Mark, or we all know what happens when you make a bunch of money too fast. These stories are repeated over and over until you start to believe that they are unquestionably true. And then they calcify into invisible scripts, which are beliefs so deep you don't even realize they're there. If you are trying to get good with money, you will eventually have to interrogate your own family beliefs about money. One good way to do this, if you want a shortcut right now, is to simply jot down the stories you've heard about family members in your life. What lessons were passed down about other family members and their relationships with money? Let's get back to our conversation with Rob and Adrian.

Your dad had a business, you have a business. Your dad worried about money, you worry about money. Your dad had a new wife who spent a lot. You have your first wife, Adrian. Do you worry about Adrian's spending?

I do, but not because she's like my stepmom. My stepmom would spend $1,000 a night in a hotel. Adrian's not like that.

What about $80 at a bakery.

Generally? Not generally anything.

We.

I think we have a rule anything less than $100, we don't have to discuss.

Wait a minute. When did you come up with that rule?

We've had that for a while. Right?

Wait, the bakery. 80 is less than a hundred. So how do you reconcile that?

I do reconcile it. I don't falter for spending the $80 without asking. I think I was just feeling bad that I was home alone, worried about money at the same time.

Okay, fair enough. Although, you know, Rob, this whole conversation began with me asking you how long you've been worried about money. You said 57 years. So when you say I was at home worried about money, that's kind of the behavior you've become accustomed to for decades, right?

Yeah.

If you're breathing oxygen, you're worried about money.

And that's why I applied to come on to your podcast.

You've detected that fear from Rob about money?

Absolutely, yeah.

What does he say that makes you think he's fearful of money?

Pretty much every single year that especially when we owned our house previously, he would sit me down and he would look at me very intently and he would say, my business is not going well. Things are going well. Terribly. We are going. This is not going to work out. Okay. And then I would say, okay, well, let's move to a lower cost place, or let's sell the house or whatever feels good to you because I want you to feel comfortable. Then he would make a ton of money and everything would be okay again. We've done that for years, and now I just think of it kind of like as the weather, like it's going to happen. He's going to tell me about how scared he is and how freaked out he is, and then generally everything's going to be okay again.

How many years have you done that for?

Quite a few. Since he had his business for sure.

How many years? 1, 5, 10. How many?

15 years. 15 years in business? Yeah.

Well, the funny thing is, when he first started his business, he was like, the business isn't going to work out. And then it just, like, became really successful. So. And I was like, fine, whatever.

Adrian, do you like this dance that Rob does with you regarding money and his business?

I don't love it. It brings fear into my body and I start to feel like I don't. You know, I look at the numbers and I feel confident in general because I know that Rob is better at math than I am. I start to wonder about my sanity and think, do I not know how much money we have? Right. Am I wrong? I go back to I feel super grateful for what we have. I go back to. I bring myself back to. I feel really grateful we have what we have. I know we're going to eat tonight. I know everything's okay. I know we're okay. So I just start to bring myself back to. It's. There's nothing we can't handle.

Adrian, are you religious?

I'm a spiritual person.

Thank you for helping me understand it.

Sure.

Rob, what do you think about Adrian's characterization of this dance that you do?

I agree that it's cyclical, that sometimes I feel scared about money and sometimes I don't. It's changed over time. Fifteen years ago, when we were in debt, I worried constantly about paying the debt off balance transfers, robbing Peter to pay Paul, all kinds of things like that. Now the fear has shifted into a more long term, low level fear of, is this money going to last 30 years for us?

And Rob, you are 62 years old. Hey, Rob, when do you get to stop worrying about money?

Oh, boy. I hope right after this conversation. But that's it?

Just one phone call? Yeah.

I mean, can you wave the magic wand? I don't know.

Well, I'm curious if it's just took one call and I hope that I can help. That's, you know, that's my goal. Why not have this conversation with somebody else 14 years ago?

Well, 14 years ago, looking back on it, seemed like there really was something to worry about. I mean, if you owe $60,000 to the banks and your income is not that high like it was 16 years ago, that's scary. I mean, to me, thinking back on it, it feels scary.

Are you scared right now?

Notice the story Rob tells himself. He's been worrying about money for 57 years. And for the last 15 years, he sat Adrian down and told her, this is going to be a horrible year. And when I ask him about that, his answer is yes, I agree that it's cyclical.

Cyclical.

Nice choice of words. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious. See, Rob thinks that this conversation will change his feelings about money.

And deep down, I suspect that Rob.

In fact, Rob and Adrian believe that if I show them some magic number, they will feel better. Well, I am going to show them numbers. I will answer their question about whether they will have enough, and I'll answer it very precisely. But I can tell you that numbers alone rarely change feelings.

Do you think that everyone worries about money?

No. People might have more faith than I do that everything's going to work out okay. I come from a, a family where like disaster was right around the corner or expected right around the corner kind of thing.

Is your mom, what is her relationship with money now.

He is still scared. Look at that. Look at her. Adrian will. Adrian will tell you that my mom is. My mom has a million dollars in a Vanguard account and still likes to shop at the dollar store.

What do you think of that?

It seems crazy. She's. She's 83 years old. It seems like she can afford to fly first class, shop, shop at any fancy store she wants. But her goal is to leave money for her grandkids and her kids and so that I can respect that.

But Rob, you have a lot more than that in your investment account. Wouldn't you say you were a little concerned about $80 at the bakery?

Yes. I think it got wrapped up into feeling alone.

Adrian, when I asked Rob what is his mom's current relationship with money, you really lit up.

Oh, I just know what she's like. I mean she is interesting because she can be really generous. She'll buy us dinner and all those kinds of things, but she'll drive way out of the way to go to Costco to get gas. Know because it's the cheapest gas.

Why does she do it?

She just thinks it's the best way to live. And I remember sitting, she was telling me that she wanted to take all this money out of the market because the market had gone up and she wanted to take all this money out and take it off the table. Like it was like this gambling thing.

Yeah.

I said, why would you do that? Don't you leave it in there. It's going to go up and down. Why even worry about it? You know, just let it go up and down. I think Rob brought different qualities to our relationship in terms of like, it's like an expansion and a contraction. There's like this moment where Rob is so confident about we're going to be fine and we've got this and we've done such a great job and I'm so grateful and everything's going great to like this plummet of like everything's going terribly, it's not going to work out. We've got to like quit spending, you know, so it's sort of a, a roller coaster, say, effect.

You remember the words that he used to describe his dad?

Yeah.

What were the words? Started emotional, something.

Well, walking on eggshells with his dad. Uh huh.

What else? The emotional instability, Something like that. Any of these sound familiar?

Yeah. We've got a Little bit of that going on for sure.

It's different, right, Rob? I don't. From what I heard, it's. You're not. Maybe not an angry guy, but walking on eggshells like, oh, Rob is here with his beginning of the year freak out about money. I'm going to walk on eggshells. I'm going to learn how to deal with him because it's that time of the year.

Yeah, right.

And then the ups and the downs. You mentioned Adrian. It affects you. It's quite negative for you. It even makes you question your sanity is how you put it. Right.

Sure. Yeah.

Rob, what do you think about this?

I apologize for doing that to you. You know, I. I'd be happy not to do that anymore.

I'm not here to blame you, for sure. I. I don't even think Adrian's blaming you. I. I just want to see if you see that connection and if you agree with that connection.

I would agree.

Yeah. Have you ever made that connection before?

Maybe not quite this clearly.

There are some obvious parallels here between Rob and his dad. I wonder what that might mean for the rest of the money dynamic that we're going to talk about. Listen now, as I ask Adrian about her family.

My parents had a very separate relationship with money. My dad was also the one in charge of the money. He also made the majority of the money, and he was also very terrified about money as well.

Why?

I mean, he grew up in the Great Depression. My dad was. He was 13 years older than my mom, so he grew up in a generation completely different than hers. He just had a lot of fears around it. I mean, we would go out to dinner, say, for example, and my brother loved to order, like, the most expensive thing on the menu. Not because he wanted. He just. Not because of the price, but because he was like, I love shrimp, you know, so he would order the shrimp, and I will look at the menu, and I know what was going on in my dad's mind and his heart. And I would try to order, like, the least expensive thing. Yeah, that was a lot that was going on with their. How they felt around money. And my mom started to make her own money. All of her money went to fun. Went to all the fun things. And, like, if we were going to go on vacation, my mom paid for vacation. If we were going to do anything fun, my mom paid for all of the fun. They kept their money completely separately, and my dad paid for everything else.

I think, basically, pretty unusual for that time, right, that they would be keeping money separate. What do you make of that?

They knew they were having a lot of fights, and that was their way of resolving the fights.

Oh, wow. So they were having fights, and they said, as a result, we're going to keep money separate. You do your thing over here, and I'm responsible for this thing over here.

My dad's a really interesting guy because my dad has a big heart, and, like, he would, like, you know, he always, like, made sure, like, the servers got a good tip, and he always made sure, like, that people around him were. Felt a lot of his, like, love and light, you know, with that and. But with us, he was constantly, like, in fear. And it was also very difficult to know what was real because my mom would say, like, oh, he's just being insane. And my dad would be like, nobody's listening to me. You know, I don't know. So there was a lot of.

Can I ask a question? Things you mentioned. It's hard to know what was real. Yeah. You sometimes feel that way when Rob comes to you and says business is going in the toilet and then you find out he made tons of money.

Yes. I mean, I. I always. I felt really comfortable when I found Suze Orman and she had all these rules.

You like rules, huh?

I do like them. And it felt really comforting to me to be like, oh, there's these rules, and you can follow them, and when you follow them, and everything will work out fine. You know, just.

Just explain to me for a second, because I want to make sure I understand. I'm guessing you don't just love rules with money. I'm guessing you like structure in many other parts of life. Is that correct?

I do. I like structure because it does make me feel safe. Yeah, for sure.

Safe.

Well, because when there's a structure, you can trust it.

Ah, so someone somewhere created this rule. And I know if I follow this rule, then what?

You're gonna have enough money and you're gonna, like. For example, if, like, I'm following, like, say, like, nutrition rules, say as well, then I'll just be like, well, if you're eating good, then you're gonna have good health. If you're following these money rules, you're going to. Your money's going to be okay.

Does Rob feel the same way about rules? Does he like that same level of structure? Oh, you're laughing.

Well, I'm just laughing because he's. He likes to break the rules a lot.

He's an entrepreneur. He has probably a different relationship with rules. Rob, is that fair to say?

Yeah, I Looked a lot at a lot of rules as, as hurdles to get around something.

Yeah, yeah, Like, I like it. I feel the same way. So, like, like, it's so interesting, Adrian talking to you. And as you got older, do you remember them saying anything about money? Talking to you differently as you became like 12, 13, 15, 16 years old about money?

The biggest thing was there was this sort of implication that, like, my brother and I would not do well, that we were lazy or kind of this whole thing. So, I mean, I don't know. I mean, like, I did a lot of things. Like, I became a massage therapist. I went, I put myself through massage school. I came out as a massage therapist. I started making money, and then I told my dad I was a massage therapist. He was like, oh, you're making money. Good.

That's kind of surprising. I would have expected him just from what you're telling me to say. That's Dom, why don't you do this instead?

No, no. If I was making money, he was going to be okay. But the whole idea of, like, the run up to making money was not going to be okay with them. You know, like the going to school and the becoming something that may or may not work out, that was not going to be okay. I just knew once I got there, if I just said, hey, guess what? I'm making a lot of money and I'm a massage therapist, he'd be like, oh, great.

Did you become good at knowing what to do and say around your dad and knowing what not to do and say around him?

I mean, it took me a second to figure out, like, how to be with my dad when I was a kid, because we definitely had some clashes for sure. But I'm really, I am really. Woo. So, like, my dad's a Leo.

What? What's that?

I mean, I was like, astrologically, my dad's a Leo. So, like, what it means is, like, if you, like, are nice and you, like, tell them all the great things about them, they're gonna be nice to you.

Wait, I'm a Leo? According to that. Let's talk about money. Okay. I'm a lot more comfortable over there. All right, so. So you grow up. So you, you. We talked about your childhood, your dad passed away, your mom's relationship with money. What is it now?

Yeah, well, it's interesting. My mom, when I started learning about money, I would say to my mom, you know, I, I think things. Let's, let's talk about it. I know all these things now. Like, let's talk about what's going on with your money? And my mom's like, I'm not good at it. I'm not good at it. So. So she would just be like, it's not something I can do. Yeah. So what was happening was when my dad passed, she had given all her money to this.

Oh, no.

You know, one of those guys who takes the 1% and everything.

Do you remember the company?

I don't remember his name. I just remember my mom kept saying, well, we're friends. And I was like, you know, you're not friends with this guy. You are not friends with this guy.

We managed to wrestle the accounts away from him and put her in a Vanguard.

Whoa.

Good job.

That's great. We did that with both our moms. Both of the moms are with us. We're the brokerage now.

Good job. I have a question. Adrian, I'm very impressed. Would you consider yourself good with money?

I don't consider myself good with math, but I do understand a lot about concepts. Like, I know what Vanguard is. I know what the 4% rule is. I know what an IRA, a Roth IRA versus a 401K. I know what all of these concepts are.

Can I ask you a question again, Adrian? Would you consider yourself good with money?

I think for who I am and my right brain, artist mind, I think I am excellent at money.

Wow. All right. Caveats and all. Fine.

There's literally years of details to uncover in what Adrian just told me. How her dad would say one thing and do another. How her mom and dad spent money differently, and how she sees herself as kind of good with money, but loaded up with all kinds of caveats. What I especially want to draw your attention to is how much your relationship with money can affect your children. Because her parents didn't know how to handle money, Adrian grew up in a ton of uncertainty. That's probably one reason she loves rules, because, as she put it, rules make her feel safe. She married someone who, like her dad, swung wildly with his moods around money. And, of course, she learned how to tiptoe around him, just like she did with her dad. Be very thoughtful about how you behave around money, because you will send a message to your children that will echo for generations.

I want to understand a little bit more about your history together with money. I understand that after Susie Orman, you got into the fire community, right?

I started reading fire blogs.

Okay.

And reading personal finance blogs. For the last 10 years, I've been online reading about finance.

Rob showed me an article in the New York Times that Mr. Money Mustache was in and. And he said this might help us with investing because previously we'd been following Susie Orman's advice on investing, and it was a disaster. Was not working at all. And once we started to understand or started to work with the Fire movement, we thought, oh, well, we won't be able to retire early, but maybe we can retire actually. Like that would actually happen. So. And because we had a short period of time, a short window or shorter window to do it in, that seemed like it was going to be really helpful. So Rob would show me a lot of different articles from the Fire Movement, and I read anything that he was showing me. There's like a meetups once in a while. So we go to some fire meetups.

Do you like it?

I do like it. I think it's really amazing. I think it's always really interesting because my people are not there. I am the only one there who's like a massage therapist or an artist. Everyone is a tech person or super smarty pants people and everything.

And so how long were you involved with the Fire Movement?

I would say I was 52. And we left Austin when I was 60, so eight years. We were doing these meetups probably. I started reading about fire at 52.

Great. All right. So you said at 52, we maybe not be able to fire, that is retire early, but we can certainly increase our savings rate, we can start to invest aggressively, we can cut our costs, and at least hopefully we'll be able to get a line of sight on retirement at all. Okay. Went to the meetups. Great. Adrian, what was your journey after Fire?

Your ideas actually came into our view after Fire, because I thought it was really interesting. Well, it was interesting. We saw you in Austin.

Oh, at the book talk that I did. Awesome.

Yeah.

I was so, like, annoyed because you're telling people not to like that coffee. Didn't. You know, they should, you know, they could keep drinking coffee or whatever. And I was like, little things matter. You know, I felt really passionate about it at that point. Like, I was like, little things.

You disagreed with me. I like that. So what was it?

That little.

That little fire voice in the back of your head. It's actually not $3 anymore. You need to index for inflation. It's actually 385. Okay. And it actually, if you compound that for 95 years, it actually turns into $10,011.

Like that.

Well, absolutely that. And also because my journey as a massage therapist, I had to give up some small things, you know, in order for me to pay off my debt.

And so I appreciate that.

I knew that that had worked for me.

Okay.

So I guess there was a part of me that was like, who's this guy? You know, And. But then after a while, after we had sort of, you know, amassed a larger amount of money and all of those kinds of things, I started to think, well, what's this guilt free spending? Like, is that a thing? Like, can we have that?

Was it just having more money or was there something else?

I mean, I think getting older, you know, you realize, like, you don't have as much time left, so your priorities, like, you're coming out of this sort of, like, survival mode into sort of like a place where you're in more of, like a freedom place. You want more freedom. I think all of those things were shifting inside of me. And I also felt confident that no matter what, like, we could always cut our spending, so if we needed to. So I just felt really confident in us. I believed in us. I believed that we could do what we needed to do when no matter what was the. You know, no matter what came towards us, because I had seen it before. So I just. And then I like rules. And you're like, maybe 10. 10% of your spending could be guilt free. And I was like, that seems cool. You know, seems exciting and, I don't know, awesome.

Okay, cool. It is interesting, though, Adrian. You were in credit card debt before a lot. And then you decided, I'm making a change. You spent several years paying it off. So you were highly engaged with your money before you got married, right?

Yes.

This was, what, in your 40s? Okay. It's difficult to turn around credit card debt at that age, like, aggressively, which you did. So you were highly engaged, but now you're less engaged. Did that change when you got married?

Not right away. I let Rob be more engaged with our money because it seemed like his zone of genius. And we always had a money date every month, and we always went through our net worth, and we went through our everything, and we looked at it. And so I knew where everything was. I knew what we were doing. I wasn't. I'm not in the dark about anything. I know what. Absolutely what we're doing. I know. You know, our money's in vanguard. I know. It's in fidelity. I know.

Where do you still have these money dates every month now?

We have them a little bit more sporadically, but we always. We do go back to them.

Okay, I. I appreciate that. Like, how often are we talking about.

It's now, what, quarterly Maybe quarterly, Probably.

Yeah, maybe quarterly, maybe less. Is it on the calendar?

It's not on the calendar. And what I would say, sometimes it feels like I've got to drag you to the computer to do it.

Talk to Adrian, Rob.

I mean, I think this is where, like, I've continued to take responsibility for this stuff. And maybe you've just decided that that's okay. I mean, since the pandemic, since we've had all this money. We sold our house in Austin a couple years ago. We made a lot of money on it, took all the cash and invested it. I don't know. It feels like since then, something shifted. It's funny, I think since we've sold the house, moved away, had 2 million bucks in the bank, we're sort of floating these last couple years. Like, there's this transition to, like, okay, well, we've made it. We don't have to push as hard. But, I mean, there's certain things that we haven't been doing. It's a very strange feeling to be on cruise control, I guess. And that's kind of what this last couple of years has sort of felt like, in a way.

There's something you want to change about that, Rob.

I mean, this conversation is making me think, well, maybe this is why I'm obsessing about this as opposed to just looking at it and having Adrian also look at it at the same time so that I don't have to feel like we're not on the same page. Maybe we should put it on the calendar for a quarterly date where we go through the net worth again, like we used to do monthly. Just do it quarterly.

It's easy. Adrian, you good with that?

Absolutely. Yeah, I want to do that.

Rob, I like that you are asking for something specific first. You asked for a quarterly meeting. Adrian was like, yeah. All right. Notice that it has nothing to do with anybody ignoring money or anything like that. It's just that one person has taken on increasing amounts of it. That's you, Rob. And then, Adrian, you've also created a story which may or may not be true about. This is Rob's zone of genius. I don't know if that's true or not. I know. He tells me he obsesses and worries about money almost every day. That's not healthy. So perhaps there's a renegotiation that needs to happen here with, you know, one person taking on a little bit more of the load. Does that sound fair to both of you?

Yes.

All right. I am curious about after Susie orman So you both had debt. Adrian, you had like, what, $35,000 or so of debt. Am I remembering that right? Okay, and Rob, how much debt did you have when you were about to get married?

60.

60K. All right, so that's a lot. So, Adrian, you paid off your debt and then Rob, you were like, hey, like, I have 60k of debt. Better tell you before we get married. And then what'd you all decide?

He committed to help me paying it off. That was the agreement that we would pool our money, pay it off together. Took a couple of years to pay off.

That's it. Two years.

Yeah, we were pretty frugal back then. And so we didn't go out to eat and we set up a game where, like, if we paid off 10,000 of debt or if we saved 10,000 after we became solvent, then we would go out to eat. Once we save ten grand.

I love it. I gotta say this for the world because a lot of people think Ramit Sethi's like, oh, everybody go spend on all this expensive clothes while you have all this debt. I'm like, you can live a rich life today and a richer life tomorrow, even if you're in debt. But I have to tell you, when I see people with 25, 30, $40,000 of credit card debt and they're eating out a ton, or they're taking a huge family trip to Disneyland, it's their money, it's their choice. But I just think to myself, I wouldn't do this, but gosh, 2 years to pay off 60k in debt. I love that you both said, we.

Made it a game.

That is amazing. It wasn't like, oh, this sucks.

Boo hoo.

We're. It's gonna suck for us all. You're like, we're gonna crush this. And then you even made rules for yourself where you could win, like, every 10,000 we get to go out to dinner. Textbook amazing work. Great job. I have to give you a round of applause. That's so impressive. What did it feel like once you finished paying that debt off?

Well, I've got. I can tell you the date that we paid it off was December 8, 2008.

Wow.

Yeah, it was two years from when I got married.

Maybe because of the yellow sheet.

What is that?

You want me to show you?

Yeah. What is that?

This is 18 years worth of our finances right here on these yellow sheets.

Wait, hold on, hold on. What? What is it? What am I looking at here? Numbers.

Now you're looking at our net worth, which is much higher.

Oh, okay. All right.

Yeah, we write it out every month.

Pull that, Pull the bottom one. Let's just read those numbers off. The first, first one in there, I.

Would like, I mean, a couple of pages have been taken away. This is $45,000 of debt where we had 72,000 in credit card debt and 26 grand in the bank.

Wow.

So this one from June 5, 2006. So it took about two and a half years to pay it, pay it off.

Hold on. First of all, these papers are like archival. These could be found in the Smithsonian. Okay. I've never seen something this detailed. Amazing. Well done.

Yeah. I mean, I got a list of all I, I, I've had way too many bank accounts through the years. I've had way too many credit cards through the years. I've done the hacking thing. I've done the churning thing.

I've done, yeah.

Balance transfers way back when, when they were a better deal than they are today.

Do you, when you look at these pieces of paper, Rob, what do you feel?

I actually really feel proud of us that we were able to document this journey from being 60k in debt all the way to being virtually able to retire.

Do you still maintain these Yellow Pages?

I've got them at a bottom of a drawer and yeah, we'll, we'll continue to make them quarterly. Like, this is the. I mean, I haven't shifted it over to. I have certain things on a spreadsheet. I've got our monthly expenses mapped out on a spreadsheet, but I don't have our network.

Rob, what do you get out of it?

I mean, it tells a story. Really.

What is the story?

The story is we went from 60k in debt, our net worth is $2 million. And it's miraculous. Feels miraculous. The miraculous story.

I love it.

Took two people busting their for quite a few years to make it realistic together. Yes.

As a team.

Beautiful. Yes.

Now, here's my question for both of you. What story do you want those Yellow Pages to tell? Now, you've done the miraculous thing. You paid off the debt, you made a bunch of money. What is the next chapter of those Yellow Pages going to tell you?

I hope that, you know, if I do a yellow sheet 20 years from now, that it's going to show enough money so that we'll have, we don't have kids, we don't have any money to leave this money to. I hope it's going to show enough money that there'll be 10 or 20 years worth of assets there that can still be spent and that we've maintained our lifestyle, you know, through it all.

I hope this yellow. Those yellow sheets tell the story of our freedom, that we have a lot of freedom to be able to do things that we want to do, that we've been able.