You’re Not Fighting About Money—You’re Fighting About This

I recently spoke to a couple worth over $87 million and they would bicker over random grocery purchases. Now I have talked to thousands of couples about money and I can tell you the fight that they are fighting about is usually never about the actual purchase. It's usually two people with totally different money beliefs trying to make decisions together. A lot of couples actually never learned how to talk about money until there is a problem. So today I'm breaking down the biggest money red flags I see in relationships and how financially healthy couples handle these conversations differently. Let's get into it. Money red flag number 1, you only talk about money when there's a problem. One thing I notice with couples and money is that their conversations are almost always reactive. Something goes wrong with money and then suddenly they have to talk about it. Like somebody overspent or a bill came in or they need to figure out if they can afford to send their kid to some activity. And after you react to money over and over, your brain starts associating money with stress because the only time you talk about it is when something bad is happening. You know, if every money conversation becomes, "Why'd you buy this?" or "Can we afford that?" then of course you're going to start avoiding it. But then couples get stuck in this exhausting cycle where every conversation about money just turns into an argument. And a lot of couples can build a transactional system together. Should we buy that? I don't think we should buy that. Maybe next time. Very few couples build a rich life vision together. So transactions are things like bills, transfers, credit cards, taxes, retirement accounts. These are the things you fight about. Oh, excuse me, talk about. But actually, there's no larger conversation that most couples have about what they want their life to look like. What is your rich life? What would be incredibly meaningful? What would feel good? So it's all maintenance. It's no vision. Now, I have seen couples making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year who still feel anxious every time they talk about money. Why? Do they need just another $50,000? No. The way you feel about money is highly uncorrelated to how much is in your bank account. So here's a fix. Set a 30-minute money conversation this Sunday. No spreadsheets, no apps. Just one question. What would make life feel easier for us right now? That's it. Let me give you a quick little exercise. When you are talking about money with your partner, if there is a pie chart, what percentage is negative and what percentage is positive? I bet you your pie chart is like 98% negative. How could you feel good about money? All you do is talk about why it feels bad. Flip that. You can start by saying, what would make us feel amazing when it comes to money? What is one tiny thing we could buy with money for under $10 that would feel incredible? What's one way we can change the way we talk about money? For example, instead of, oh, we gotta deal with these bills, you say, we get the opportunity to work through our finances together. What a gift. That is how you start to shift that pie chart day by day, percentage by percentage, so you can actually start to feel good about money. Money red flag number 2: one person becomes the money person. Now, this is a very common dynamic in a relationship where the money person does all the money and the other person just kind of checks out. Now, I get how this happens because in every relationship, each person naturally kind of divides responsibilities. One person might cook more, the other person handles filling out the school forms, one person deals with laundry or mowing the lawn. So, okay, each person has their area that that they handle in the relationship. But guess what? Money is different. Money cuts across everything. Money affects where you live, what your kids' education looks like, whether you have to stay at a job you hate, if you can help your parents, when you can retire. Money is much closer to raising children than it is to emptying the dishwasher. And I guarantee almost none of you would say, "Oh, they're the kid person in this relationship." That's not how it works. And this is where things start to get scary because I love to ask really morbid questions. So I'll ask something like, Okay, you both love each other. That's evident. Now, what if your partner got hit by a bus in a grisly accident tomorrow? Would you know where the mortgage gets paid from? Would you know where the investments are? Would you know the passwords? The partner who is not the money person just stares at me blankly. And I need you to listen, especially women watching this, because there's a huge epidemic of men who were the money person and they die and their wives are left helpless. They don't know where the bills are paid from. They don't understand anything about the investments. Now they're grieving while trying to figure out this entire financial life that they were never included in and often never wanted to be included in. Even in my own relationship, it would have been easy for me to be the money person, and I refused. I insisted that we both participate together. Let me tell you why. First, I wanted for my wife to be very knowledgeable about money. One day I'm gonna kick the bucket, and I'll be damned if Goldman Sachs calling the next day saying, hello, we're from the wealth management, we'd like to charge you 1.35% AUM, we can help you with proprietary IP. Shut the fuck up! We're never going to be a part of Goldman Sachs ultra-high net worth. Fuck you. She knows that. Next, I wanted us to be stewards of our money together. Like, I can make decisions about our money, but I actually think that sometimes I make mistakes. I need somebody with a second set of eyes. And finally, I wanted to have more fun. It's fun to create a vision together and to talk about it and to decide what our money is going to do for both of us. There is no version of building a rich life together where one person is the money person. That's not how it works. You both do it. And when you do it, it might be a little harder up front, but it is well worth it when the two of you are totally aligned. And this is why I think real financial partnership is about more than just splitting bills or knowing your investment accounts. It's also about making sure the other person would actually be okay if something happened to you. And I've seen way too many families realize too late that they did not have an actual plan in place. That's where today's sponsor, Fabric by Gerber Life, can help. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today. 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Meetfabric.com /ramitsethi. Money red flag number 3, you're bringing two different money rule books into one relationship. Can I just ask you a question? What is your philosophy about money? Wipe that disgusting drool off your mouth. You never even thought about this question in your life. I know it because when I ask people, what's your philosophy about money? They just, the sesame from the bagel they're eating just is dripping out of their mouth. They don't even know what I'm talking about. But guess what? You have a philosophy on food. You know what type of food you like, what type of food you don't. You know that you prefer to eat at 6:30, not 8:30, and on and on and on. You have a philosophy around shoes in the house. Some of you are disgusting barbarians. You bring your filthy shoes in the house and you wear it. I don't understand why. I've even seen you wearing it on your bed. Disgusting, revolting. Get off my channel. But for the rest of you, you have a coherent philosophy around cleanliness and hygiene. How come you don't have a philosophy around money? Literally the thing that affects everything in your life, where you live, what you eat, if your kids have acne. It's everything. But you don't have a philosophy on that. I'm going to tell you something. You actually probably do have a philosophy deep down, but you haven't consciously acknowledged it. That's because every person enters a relationship with totally different money beliefs that are often invisible to themselves. And a lot of people don't even realize these scripts. That's why I call them invisible scripts. Because couples never explore these deeper beliefs, they often have these strangely repetitive fights. That don't really seem to make sense on the surface. Like, I got this Instagram DM once from somebody who said, "Can you help me get my husband to stop buying iced tea every day?" So I was like, "This is an interesting DM. I think I'm gonna respond." And I said, "What's your household income?" She gets very quiet, but you know, I love to pry, so I got the answer. They make about $600,000 a year living in Manhattan. And immediately you realize this is not actually about the iced tea. If you dig beneath the invisible scripts. For him, the iced tea probably means, "I work hard, we make tons of money. Why are we even talking about this? We can pay for the iced tea with the interest on our savings." For her, iced tea might represent waste and scarcity. Maybe she grew up in an immigrant household where you don't do that, you do it yourself. And this is the part that so many of you are missing. If you never investigate the meaning beneath the fight, you're gonna spend the next 25 years arguing about iced tea. What a waste of your life. You are not actually fighting about the expense at Target or the gas station or beef jerky, or should you buy your kid that extra toy? What's really going on here is what money represents to you. Okay? You are fighting about identity and safety and control. And those are much deeper, tougher answers to get than, "Why'd you spend $4?" When couples truly buy into this, they can have massive breakthroughs. Because once you realize, oh my God, we're not actually fighting about the iced tea, you can actually have really honest conversations. Here's how I grew up with money. Here's what money means to me. Here's what would feel joyful. And here's what scares me. For a lot of people watching, especially men, have you ever thought about what scares you? I had a friend who used to run a magazine on fear, and she wanted to interview me. And she's like, you know, I want to know what scares you. What makes you feel fear? I was like, fear? Fuck fear. But I thought fear meant physical fear, like a lion is coming to eat me, that type of fear. But there are lots of other kinds of fears, aren't there? Fears that I'm not going to live up to my potential. Fear that my stupid friend from high school is doing better than me. Fear that I'm never going to be able to travel the way that I see on Instagram. Or fear that my partner doesn't really respect me. Couples who dive deeper into these concepts of fear and shame and identity, they can come to actually understand each other. And that is such a beautiful breakthrough. Now, this next part is where couples usually realize they've been trying to budget better, ugh, when the real issue is they never actually built a shared vision for their life in the first place. Money red flag number 4, you have no shared vision. Some of you might be wondering, why did I just almost vomit in high resolution on this video? Well, let me tell you why. Because so many of you feel guilty for your entire life. I need to keep a budget. And then you never do. And when you do, it lasts for 2 weeks. And when I look at these budgets, they look like shit. I'm sorry. I'm telling you the truth. Many of you have never gotten direct, honest feedback since you were in elementary school. So let me get this straight. Every week you spend 5+ valuable hours maintaining this shitty budget. You don't even know what it tells you. All it tells you is I'm doing something wrong and then, oh, I got to do this for the rest of my life. No wonder you don't understand anything about money. I think a lot of people have a confusing relationship with money because on one hand, they love what money represents. Beautiful home, vacations, flexibility, freedom. And we all go, yeah, I want that. But day to day, money feels terrible. Bills, stress, confusion, guilt. This constant low-grade feeling. That you're behind. So what happens is people start avoiding money altogether because that feels easier. So a bill comes in the mail, you go, "Ugh, I'll deal with that later." Then 6 weeks pass, another bill shows up, maybe you have to panic pay something, and then you avoid it for another month. And this cycle goes on literally for years. Most people only deal with money when they have to. Can you imagine talking about your kids like that? "Oh, this annoying little shit. Oh my God." 'Put a diaper on him.' 'All right, fine. Let's deal with him in another 3 weeks.' First of all, you're a negligent parent. But second of all, that's not how we talk about things that we love, things that we respect. People make a mistake in thinking that they need discipline. 'We just need to buckle down, stop spending this much.' Look at my body language. Look at me restraining myself. You never simply restrained yourself to a rich life. You notice that? I'm gonna tell you something about money that very few other people have told you. Your problem is not a budget. Your problem is probably not simply discipline. But one real problem is that you have no powerful vision of what money is supposed to be for you. You don't have a reason of why you should actually engage with your bills. You don't have a vision of what money is supposed to get you. You just think it's a series of mere transactions. What a boring life. You know, I've talked to couples who have been talking about the same trip to Italy for literally 15 years, and every summer it's like, maybe next year. Oh, the kids are busy. But they never actually build the system or the conversation that would make it actually happen. They don't have a powerful vision because they just say trip to Italy. Look at how one-dimensional that is. Look, look, It's one-dimensional. There's not three dimensions. What's a three-dimensional? Look at this beautiful bottle of perfume I got from Mexico City or cologne, whatever. Three-dimensional. I open it. Beautiful. I can smell it. I can feel it in my hands. Now, what if your vision for your trip to Italy or Thailand or India was that powerful? Hold on. I'm going to get in full on it. Beautiful. Now, as I talk, I'm thinking, I'm feeling, I'm smelling the type of trip that I want to take back to Mexico City again. I want you to go deeper on having a powerful vision of what a rich life would be. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it smell like? Now, your rich life does not have to be extravagant. Early on in my early 20s, one rich life vision I had was wanting to be able to take a taxi in August instead of sweating on the subway. Now, Think about how I brought that vision to life. I felt that sweat on the back, just going down my back. Ah, I knew that you could see the back of my shirt all wet. Ah, going down the subway, it's 150 degrees like an oven. Ah, or getting out of a taxi with the air conditioning blowing on me and feeling really good. $10. That was my rich life when I started. Maybe your rich life is I don't want to look at the price of blueberries at the grocery store. I want to pick it up.. And as I pick it up, I want to say thank you. Maybe it's I want to travel for a month every summer and I want to see water wherever we're staying. Beautiful. These specifics are different for everybody, and that's the point. What matters is being able to create a future together, because once couples can do that, money stops feeling like punishment. It starts feeling like a tool for building something meaningful, something three-dimensional. That is a rich life. Together. I find that people who have started on their personal finance journey sometimes do not know when they have done enough. Like, they'll constantly ask, what did I miss? Uh, I need to read 10 more subreddits. What about this one obscure thing that might happen? And it doesn't feel good to constantly worry that you got something wrong. That is exactly why we created Road to $100K. For most people, reaching your first $100,000 invested is a massive financial milestone. It's often the point where you stop feeling like you are guessing because you can finally see that the decisions you've made are really starting to add up. Inside Road to $100K, you will get a personalized path based on your actual numbers, not generic advice. You'll see exactly where you stand today, what's holding you back, and what to focus on next. You will also get access to live coaching and a community of people working towards the same goal. If you are ready to start making real progress towards $100,000 invested, scan the QR code on screen or click the link below to learn about Road to $100K. What couples who are great with money do differently. I love studying couples who are really good with money because they often have these tiny little habits that completely change the emotional tone of their relationship. Let me share some of them with you. One thing that couples who are great with money do is they talk about money regularly, not just when something explodes. You know what's funny? Just this morning, Thursday morning, my wife and I had our money discussion. We have an agenda. We update it. Today actually was a pretty light day. There wasn't much to talk about. We had a couple of follow-ups from last time, but we talked about it and that was great. Part of talking about money regularly is getting over the feeling of weirdness of having a standing meeting with your spouse. Is it weird? Maybe. Do I care? Not at all. I don't care how weird your relationship is as long as it works for both of you. And so having a standing meeting, I recommend once a month. Some people upgrade it to once a week. Fine. And it's not this terrifying formal board. You're not going to put on a freaking suit and somebody's getting blamed. That's not how it works. We always talk about something positive first. What's a compliment? You know, something I appreciate about you is you always make sure that we have the best almond butter from the farmer's market. Like every time I open up the cabinet, I know it's gonna be there. It feels so good to know that. Then these couples cover the numbers and then they talk about any upcoming things they need to be aware of. Maybe it's goals, maybe it's decisions, maybe the dishwasher's about to break. This is collaborative. Instead of adversarial. And one of the healthiest things that couples who are great with money do is they create the feeling that nobody's in trouble during these conversations. You are not blaming somebody. You are creating a system, and both of you are contributing to it. In couples that are great with money, both partners own part of the financial system. It is not just one person. Maybe one person tracks groceries. Maybe the other handles travel planning or investments, what's important here is that both partners are involved. In my own relationship, I know more about investments, so I am in charge of the investments. However, my wife knows all of our numbers. I explain to her, here's what I'm thinking of doing, and sometimes I ask her, what do you think about this? Do you think that we should increase our investment number or decrease it? Here's my thinking, here's what I would do, but I'd love to know what you think. Great money couples don't just manage finances, they create rituals. The one couple I know, they decided that every time they hit a big savings milestone, they ordered the most expensive dessert on the menu, no questions asked. Do you have a ritual with money? Even if you're in debt, you can create a ritual. It could be as simple as, we go take a walk and watch the sunset every time we pay off an extra $1,000 towards our debt. Beautiful. And over time, you're going to enjoy those sunset walks more and more because you know you are tying money to a beautiful sunset. That's how you do it. Healthy couples are surgical with their vision. They do not just want to go to Italy. They know they want to spend 10 days in a boutique hotel in Florence, eating at this specific restaurant that they saw on Instagram. And finally, these healthy couples are completely unapologetic about what they love. If their money dial is health, they might spend $500 a month on a high-end gym, and they don't care what anybody else thinks about it because it's your rich life. It's not mine. It's not anybody else's. These couples don't have to sheepishly justify it to friends. Oh, I like my sweater, but actually I got it on sale. It was a discount. Actually, they were about to burn it, so I retrieved it from the burn pile. It's fine. Please don't look at me. They say, this matters to us and we make sure that we prioritize it. That confidence around what is important changes the whole emotional tone around spending. By the way, if you like these type of conversations about money psychology, hit subscribe. I want to show you the things that you were not taught growing up, specifically how you can use your money to live your rich life. How to change your money dynamic. If you want to completely change your relationship with money as a couple, the first thing you got to do is stop treating money conversations like punishment. These conversations can actually be helpful, but if you continue using the same language you've been using for a long time, it's going to be really hard to make it work. For example, oh, we got to talk about paying off our bills, or what'd you do with the car payment? Didn't I tell you it needed to be paid yesterday? Or "Why even bother with this? We're never going to get ahead." Would you ever talk about your loved ones like that? Would you ever talk to your kids like that? No. So it's a little confusing why you would talk about money, which is actually a central character in your rich life, like that. I think you need to respect money a lot more than you do. Respecting money means you speak well of it, even when things may not be going perfectly. Respecting money means you spend time on it. Respecting money means that you do it together. You don't get frustrated and take it all on yourself. When you respect money, you build a healthier relationship with money. And when you build a healthier relationship with money, you actually can live a much bigger, richer life. I want you to have more conversations about money. These conversations, when you frame them as an opportunity, can actually bring you closer together. For example, you can learn why your partner often reacts emotionally to very specific purchases. You can learn why they avoid money, why they obsess over saving, why they feel anxious. And once you understand that, you're actually gonna get a lot of compassion for them. A lot of people are guided by these very simplistic things that they observed when they were 5 or 6 years old. And these are the fears, the anxieties that we have about money. But as adults, we don't realize that often we are behaving just like children. And that's okay. That's human. I do it too. Like, for example, when I go to a hotel, sometimes I see the little minibar and even I go, oh, shh, close that thing. I'm not getting anything out of there. Because when I was a kid, first of all, we never even went to hotels. But on the odd occasion, maybe twice in my entire childhood, my dad made it very clear, do not open that. So even today, for a $6 bag of chips, I'm like, "Eh, close it." We are all guided by these invisible scripts from our childhood. It takes a lot of courage to actually dig them up and hold them up to the light. That's why one of my favorite questions for couples is to simply ask them, "What's your rich life?" Not even, "What are your financial goals?" Fuck, nerd question. What's your rich life? Start with what actually feels exciting. You know what? I wanna be able to go out to a restaurant and order a dessert. I want to be able to order two. Amazing. Where'd that come from? Why is dessert so powerful to you? Because when I was a kid, we could never order dessert. Sometimes I ask them, what's one thing you'd never want to have to look at the price of again? What's one thing that would genuinely make you both feel rich? And once couples actually start asking these questions to each other, the emotional tone of the conversation changes completely. Notice that you're not just talking about transactions or bills or budgeting. You're actually talking about the kind of life you want to build together. So your next move is not another money fight. It's certainly not creating a budget. It's having one honest conversation about money. But you need structure to have that conversation and have it well. I'm going to walk you through the exact framework that my wife and I use to talk about money without stress, without resentment, without even awkwardness in this video right here.