“We’re drowning in debt…but I drive a BMW”

When you discuss money, what actually happens?

It's an argument pretty much. We're just never on the same page about it. I guess even though I say I do trust him all the time with finances, I guess I really maybe don't trust you as much as I thought.

I always tell myself I'm going to change and do certain things, but then it's like I'll do it for a few weeks and then I'll take a couple steps back. We're just going to dig our hole deeper. We're never going to be able to pay our debt.

Yep.

And God forbid something happens, God forbid.

Something happens, then we're really going to be screwed.

And then what are you going to do then?

Going to have to sell the house. I don't know. Move back home. Going to be horrible. We'll both feel really like terrible. Like we really just failed.

I feel like it was always just easier to push the problems to the side just to highlight how that is. Tomorrow we have a dinner with her brother and his girlfriend Alison here in New York City.

So it was hard to get the reservation.

Yeah, good.

Where?

Tough reservation.

Where? Which restaurant?

Teresi Teresa.

Kevin and Michelle are in their early 30s. They've been married for two years with a three year old, and they have another on the way in six months. But they are drowning in debt. And when you hear why, I think you're going to be shocked. I will tell you that my jaw drops several times during our conversation. Kevin and Michelle are textbook examples of the chaser, avoider dynamic. She's a warrior and she chases him. He's an avoider and he runs. That part is obvious. But I'm more interested in why they behave the way they do now. This is our first ever live recorded episode which took place in New York City earlier this year. Head over to YouTube to watch and subscribe for even more exciting updates coming soon and make sure to comment and let me know what you think of the new format.

She was out of the country with our son and her mom. She went on a cruise. She calls me and she tells me, hey, like, you have to pay this, our mortgage this day. You have to deposit the money into the account. Being busy and stuff like that, I had never gotten a chance to just go to the bank and deposit the money.

Okay, how much are we talking about?

It was like $800 or a little bit more maybe. It was just sitting in my car and she tells me to go deposit it. And she told me that before she left. Now I didn't deposit it. I think it was Friday was the first and also one of the days I get paid. So I knew I was getting paid regardless. I didn't put the money in, but I had just held the cash on hand. So she logs in on the cruise and she sees that I haven't deposited the money. She's like freaking out. I guess in her eyes or in her mind, I had spent that money on something. And I'm like, michelle, I have the money. I just haven't had the time to go deposit it. I was like, if you want, I'll transfer you the money. But before we got even to that point, she was just so upset and disappointed because she felt like I had let her down. I understood what she. Where her frustration was. She was. She was on vacation, she was trying to enjoy herself, and she just felt like she couldn't even leave me one task and I could complete it. I feel like her approach in certain situations, it's just like, not aggressive, but she's just so quick to like. Her approach sometimes isn't the greatest.

So, like, I'm accusatory to you almost.

And then I get, I guess, defensive. And then that's when kind of we have like a disagreement.

Did you pay extra for that Internet on the cruise?

I did. I wasn't sure I was gonna have anything, like, in terms of Internet. So I'm like, you need to like, make sure you pay this. I gave him all the login information for everything because he had not once, since he bought the house, ever paid the mortgage. Because he'll just send me the money and then I'll pay it.

Why?

I guess that's just how we did it.

Why all the decisions you made, the hundreds of decisions you made well before this cruise?

Because I could handle the. Well, like, you know, it was. I'm the financial person, Like, I'm the one that's gonna handle everything. I forgot exactly what I said, but I did say something. So where's the 2000? Or something like that? And then he probably already. Okay, I understand. He felt accused. So then that's why he maybe felt, you know, upset about the whole situation.

No, I feel. I feel like if we were able to pull up those messages, it was more along the lines. I knew I couldn't trust you with this.

Could she?

She could.

Because, I mean, it hadn't been paid and it was the day.

Right. It's like really hard because I feel like I'm like investing so much time into this. I want him to, like, ask questions. I Want him to get engaged into, like our finances. That's what I really want.

And how would you describe Kevin's relationship with family money right now?

Not scared of it, but just like, just avoidant. If I give him, if I'm like, oh, here's the password. If he's like, oh, can you, can you send me $100 for this or something? I'm like, yeah, just log into our account and just take it yourself. But you don't have to ask me for a hundred dollars. Just go get it. Then he's like, well, no, I'll just wait. Then like you just log in and get it.

And then what happens?

Then I log in and I send it to him.

So he doesn't. He just pretty much get what he wants.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's true.

I've always felt like the finances, even though we are married, obviously it should be very open. But one point, I thought it should be more private and I didn't want to feel like I was kind of being nosy and like looking at her stuff. I'm. I know what I should be doing, but I still overspend here and there. Whether it's like little things, stopping at a 711 and just buying like water, juice and stuff, unnecessary spending. I personally, I don't know how she feels about that, but I think I've.

Been better because I'm like, I want him to realize, like, you can go to 711 and get whatever you want. You can go get whatever, like a slushie, you can go do whatever, buy candy, like, you know, whatever. Nothing's off the table, but it just, you have to stay within the cert, like the 25% or whatever it was that your guilt free spending is. You know what I mean?

I'm so. I have so many things going on currently that it kind of like my mind is all over the place. So I guess I, I appreciate having her kind of handle our finances. And I feel like a lot of the stress comes off of my shoulders because I'm. I feel sometimes overworked with work and school, like two jobs and then trying to be there for the family at the same time. So it kind of feels good to have that pressure off my shoulders. But then I realized she wants to know that in the future I am going to be good with my money. She wants to make sure that once we are making more money, we're not just spending it all.

I noticed that Kevin has given up all responsibility of the family finances to Michelle, and Michelle eagerly accepts it. She Tries to give him a login, but when he doesn't even open up the link, she just transfers money over to him. He also says, I guess I appreciate her having a handle on our finances. This is a classic phrase. People who don't want to be involved in the money tend to lavish praise on their partner, saying things like, she's just better with money, or, he knows how to handle our family finances. I'm not a math person, but in reality, this is just an unconscious or sometimes conscious technique to avoid responsibility. We'll be right back. Last thing, the comments about 7 11. He mentions overspending at 711 a lot. Frankly, I'm skeptical. Nobody gets into tons of debt from 7 11. Let me keep going and find out how they grew up with money.

Think back to being a kid. What phrases do you remember your parents saying about money?

Dad definitely, like, save, save, save. That's too expensive. You know, we can't eat out. We'll go to, like, this place we had down the block. And it was just like a $12, like, combo. Like where we live. It's like a Portuguese food place. And it was like we would just the whole family feed, like, everyone with $12. And he was so happy about that.

Wow.

How many people in the family?

Well, it's four of us.

Okay.

Yeah. And my mom. Not really much. I think my dad was more in control of the finances.

She grew up with both her parents. I grew up with a single mother. Now, my mother worked very hard to provide for myself growing up, but her way of thinking was she would try to provide and give me all these things. Not materialistic things, but she would try to give me experiences that she felt would bring us closer together. So she would work her butt off just for us to have a very nice dinner on the weekend. And, like, that would be our thing. We would have one very nice dinner on the weekend. She was almost like living paycheck to paycheck, but all of that was still trying to spend on. She would spend that all on me in the sense that she wanted me to have good things, quote unquote.

You know, Let me ask a couple questions. When you say a very nice dinner, what are we talking about?

We would come into the city and have a dinner at an expensive restaurant or food.

Sit down restaurant.

Like a sit down restaurant. It would be like a restaurant that. I don't know, maybe you'd run into, like a celebrity kind of thing. But she. She would kind of want me to experience those things. And. And she'll be like, hey, we're going to go out to dinner at this place. And. And I'd be like, okay, I didn't know anything about it. But then she would show me, like, a newspaper article where she read about it and stuff. So she was like, yeah, I want to, like, treat you to this.

So now, knowing that you also mentioned she lived paycheck to paycheck, when you look back on those experiences on the weekend, going to these nice restaurants, what do you take away from those experiences?

I don't think it was worth it. She could have done so much more with that. And it's funny because she's older and I still sit down and have conversations with her and I tell her these things. Like, I told her we were coming here to the podcast, and I told her about how that. I don't think that when I was younger, she did the right things financially. And she. She understands that.

What'd she say?

She. She agrees, but she blames it kind of on the fact that she's an immigrant and doesn't really speak good English. She kind of, like, she could have been more successful if she had understood the language better, and she would have been able to do more with her investments and stuff like that. As a single mother, she was able to buy a house, and we had the house for two to three years, but then she ended up having to sell it because it wasn't set up for her to be successful and for us to be successful in the house. It was kind of like one of those balloon payment kind of things where she ended up never paying towards the principal of the house. And that was when the market was terrible in 2008, around that time. And she fell victim to, like, you know, to those terrible mortgage practices that were going on at the time.

Why do you think that she took you to those restaurants now with some perspective?

She just wanted to have a good experience together. Memories that we would create and we could talk about and say that we did those things, whether it was that, whether it was some vacations and stuff. And I was always in. It's funny that I'm terrible with finances because when I was younger, I was the one in charge of handling all her bills. I was the one who. She would give me pretty much access to her paychecks or to her bank accounts, and I was the one. She would tell me, hey, you have to pay this, this and that on a certain day, certain time, whatever.

Hold on.

She would tell you that you have to pay this bill and that bill on this day.

Yeah.

Does that happen in your life anywhere else right now?

Yeah, it does.

Who does that?

It all came full circle, and it's the same situation now with my wife.

But you did pay the bills for your mom. Why don't you pay the bills for me?

I'll give you a perfect other example. Our taxes. We just did our taxes. Now I ask all these questions, and when I ask the questions, she gets annoyed with me.

Put yourself in her shoes. Why do you think she might be upset?

Because she feels like I don't ask the questions any the other time. So why am I asking it now?

Yes. Feels like.

Can you give me an analogy?

It feels like I'm trying to kind of sit on the sidelines all the time, and now all of a sudden, I want to hop in the game and play.

Yeah, because you're gonna get your money. Because you're gonna get your.

Well, it wasn't that. It wasn't that we were gonna get.

No, I know, but, you know, that's my. That's my interpretation. Like, you know, you're expecting a lump sum of money, and then you want to know what to do with it when, like, you didn't know it. Like, we didn't. You didn't contribute the whole year to, like, the, you know, the bills or whatever.

It feels a bit like backseat driving. Let me ask the question a different way. What is a better way for you to change throughout the whole year?

Be more involved. How? Ask the necessary questions. Take initiative. Be a part of paying the bills. Be aware. We need to be on the same page and ask each other the questions. That's what our goal is here, is to feel comfortable and realize and break those barriers that there should be no. I wouldn't say secrets, but, like, there shouldn't be any disconnect when it comes to. To knowing each other and our finances.

Okay.

What would have happened if the mortgage had not gotten paid on the 1st?

I have no idea. Probably a fee. A late fee problem.

What do you think, Kevin?

Definitely. Probably a late fee. Definitely a fight. The trust would have been completely gone right at that point. I feel like.

Michelle, did you ever think about not checking in on the first.

No. I probably was always going to check my account.

Oh, she was. Absolutely.

Because I wasn't going to check in with him. If I looked at the account and everything looked right, then I would have just been happy. But when I looked at it and then there was the 2000 missing, I'm like, oh, like I have a problem. It's already the first.

The.

The Like I said, we didn't. I didn't have WI fi that day. I was already, I was just in. We were the, you know, the crew stopped at the port and we were leaving Mexico at 3pm so I'm already like spiraling like, okay, it's going to be. It's like already 1pm I need to like make sure this gets paid before three so I can like, you know, rest my head tonight. Yeah.

There's one area I want to comment on here. The dynamic of money between them, the way that they have set their money up. Michelle is the parent and Kevin is the child. He has to ask for money to be transferred to him. He doesn't do much because his parent, excuse me, his wife Michelle, handles everything. This is insanely frustrating to her and understandably so. But of course she's co created this dynamic. At one point I said, what would have happened if the mortgage hadn't gotten paid? What I was really looking for was what kind of boundaries Michelle has ever set, what kind of consequences would he face? But the answer was none. Michelle would never let that happen. Which is why she was logging on to check if her husband paid the mortgage at home.