104. “We’re worth $1.25M, so why is he afraid to get a $15 gym membership?”
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Before we start today's show, I have a really exciting announcement that I've been wanting to share for a long time. On January 1st, 2025, I'm releasing a new book called Money for Couples. For the last three years, you've heard me on this podcast speaking to different couples every single Tuesday. I've spoken to over 170 couples on this show about their money psychology, the money messages they heard from their family, the peculiar dynamics that they have around money and where they get stuck.

and how they can get on the same page. Well, behind the scenes, I've been working on the definitive book to help couples get on the same page with money, and that's what I wrote for you. It's coming out January 1st, and in the book, I'm going to share how to talk about money, including the exact words to use, when to talk about it, how to teach your kids about money, even the exact agenda and account setup that my wife and I use in our finances.

I'm going to show the tactics to make instant improvements, like how to set up your accounts to automatically work together and how to assess your financial health.

And finally, you're going to get a deeper understanding of money psychology in your relationship. And you're going to discover why you and your partner see money differently and how to get on the same page. Now, it's one thing to listen to couples or watch couples every single week. I love doing that for you. But it's a whole different thing to be able to have the book and to be able to work through it with your partner. Okay?

I'm so excited to get this book in your hands. You can pre-order it using the link IWT.com slash money for couples and stay tuned for a lot more on this book this year. Again, go to IWT.com slash money for couples to pre-order my new book about getting on the same financial page as your partner.

Um, what the hell is going on on this podcast that like 80% of the people who come on here go through massive screening, fill out applications, they never actually read my book. Is anyone else puzzled by this? Look, a lot of the questions that you ask me about money are answered directly in I Will Teach You To Be Rich. How do you pay off your student loans? How do you automate your finances? Where do you start investing and how do you handle big purchases?

I wrote this book as a six-week program so you can follow along on your own or with a partner. If you want to improve your finances, I recommend you get the I Will Teach You To Be Rich book. It has over 18,000 reviews on Amazon. Get it at iwt.com book.

I find finance discussions intimidating, threatening almost at times, awkward. I'm very avoidant to the conversations. Jesse is not a planner. Jesse, would you agree with that? Yes, I'm very fly by the seat of the pants. How would you describe the way you feel right now? Mad at myself because I don't think I realize what I created. What did you create? An environment where...

You know, Jesse doesn't see the big vision of what he's capable of doing. I'm sorry, Jesse, love you so much. But like, it's so clear that you're so anxious on this conversation. The deeper we get in because like you're using like buzzwords to try and like talk effectively instead of just being like you're yourself.

I want Jesse to be interested in what we're doing with our money. And I feel like I created that. Like I've created this dependent relationship that's not, it's not sustainable.

Meet Stacey, who's 37, and Jesse, who's 38. They've been married for 11 years and they live in Canada. What makes them fascinating is not the fact that Stacey makes five times what Jesse makes. It is the dynamic between them. For example, when they got invited to be on this podcast, they first attended a screening call with my producer. And here's what Stacey wrote

I booked time Thursday for the screening call and added my husband Jesse's email to the invite. He may be able to join too. This is actually a huge red flag. We require both partners to be on the call. We state that very clearly. So the fact that she took the lead and said he may be able to attend got our antenna up.

How would you handle it if you had a relationship dynamic where one person took the lead on everything and wished that the other would get engaged?

Well, we're about to find out as you listen to this conversation with Jesse and Stacey. You can watch this entire episode on YouTube. And I always love to do that because it lets you see their body language, facial expressions, which gives you a whole new insight into the dynamic between the two of them. All right, let's get to it.

The day I applied to go to the show, to be on the show, was a day where Jesse and I were arguing around. He was debating to get a gym membership. So he's had some physical ailments in the last couple of years. His physiotherapist recommended a gym, or rather a treadmill. We didn't want to buy a treadmill to fit in the house. So there's a gym near our house and near Jesse's business.

that he can easily go to. It's like 15 bucks a month. And he hemmed and hawed about like whether we could afford it. And I was like, we're not poor anymore. We can afford that. It made me realize, A, he doesn't understand that. And B, that such an insignificant amount of money per month, he felt like he had to figure a way around not spending it instead of just talking to me about the expense. Hmm.

And so what happened? We had like a discussion about it. I was like, we're not poor anymore. Like, you can get this. And I think it still took him two weeks to actually buy the gym membership. When you said, we're not poor anymore. What was Jesse's response?

Yeah, I think, yeah, I know, but. But what? But like I can figure out a way to like not spend this money or maybe I'll look into cheaper options. But I'm like, you're not really going to find a cheaper gym. It's already a discount gym. A lot of very sensible reasons. Did it work? Yes, but it took him, I think, a couple of weeks to figure.

to buy it and pull the trigger. Jesse, what happened in that conversation? What do you remember the first glimmer of the treadmill discussion being? I dragged my feet on a lot of random expenses because I'm always trying to save money. Why? I just have it in my head that, well, I mean, I don't personally make a whole lot. So I feel like the household doesn't initially make a whole lot, which is not really the case. About a week later, I did finally pull the trigger, got the membership ahead.

And I've been trying to do as much stepping or walking, sorry, as I can to heal my ankles. Cool. I'm glad you got the membership. Thank you. Would you consider that discussion or series of discussions a success?

Yes. Oh, a hundred percent. But, uh, I still try and tighten my belt and to Stacy's point, I do it nonsensically at times as, as, as this instance was, I'm just very uncomfortable spending money. Uh, always been like that. Yes. Yeah. All right. Gotcha. Um, when you eat out, do you eat every single thing on your plate? Yes. Your parents taught you that my father? Yes. What did he say?

Uh, Oh God. A lot of like father esque things. Like if you don't eat that, they're starving children in Africa was a very common line. Um, Oh God. Uh, you can't leave the dinner table till you're done. Right. Sort of thing. Okay. Okay, cool. All right. I got it. Uh, I don't even like spending money on public transit. If I, if it's within, you know,

tens of kilometers, maybe I'll bike it. It doesn't matter whether or anything. And that's just to save myself six bucks. If it's raining, I think a more rational person I feel would probably just spend the money for public transit. Uh, whereas I would prefer not to. Got it. All right. Hearing what you just told me, Jesse, and really listening to yourself and what you just said to me, do you hear any themes that

I noticed that I'm very, I don't want to say miserly, but that's probably a really good word about it to use. Miserly means what? Oh,

I want to keep what possession I have because I don't have... Yeah, marginally is a poor word because I feel like I don't have a lot. And for the longest time, I didn't. We're somewhat better. I don't have a very steady income for the past year because I just started a new business. So it's been really messing with my brain on how much funds we have available to spend. So what else do you notice about your answers to me? If you were...

like a scientist examining the transcript of what you just told me, what would you note? Uh, that I'm uncomfortable, uh, spending, uh, nervous, um, uncertain. Hmm.

Because he's not involved in the finances, he doesn't know where that threshold is. He still thinks that threshold for what we can spend was the same when we were in our early 20s. I want Jesse to be like, I'm getting this gym membership. It's $15. This is the decision I'm making and just buy it. This is what I mean when I say focus on the $30,000 questions, not the $3 questions, or in this case, the $15 gym membership questions.

Jesse's gone for such a long time agonizing over whether to join this gym, all for $15. Imagine the costs of worrying about a $15 purchase and all the opportunities that you're leaving aside. And with people who worry about tiny questions like this, it's never just one purchase. In fact, with Jesse...

There was a worn out bag that he didn't want to replace. There was a desktop computer that he used until it completely failed. He bikes or walks around town to save $6 even when it's raining. My point is not that you should just spend money on everything. My point is that some people live their entire lives trying to spend as little money as possible. And that has significant costs.

You know how many people's conscious spending plans I see every week? What's fascinating is the categories of spending, especially the ones where people spend way more than they think they do. For example, subscriptions. Let's take a look at some recent numbers on how much people spend on subscriptions. $100 a month on subscriptions. $205 a month. That's from someone spending 76% of their take home each month on fixed costs.

costs, $211 a month, $147 a month, and $487 a month. This is literally thousands of dollars a year, and most of us have forgotten about all the subscriptions we are actually paying for.

Thank you.

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I was 18, just in my first year of university. And just- No money. 19. Yeah, no money. No money. I was a musician dropping out of college, going on tour. When did you start to make some amount of money? A comfortable amount of money? 26, 27. So let's go back to when you were in your early 20s, even 25, 26, 27. When you would talk about money, what were those conversations like?

Our roles were very much reversed because Stacey was in school until she was 24, 25. 24, yeah. 24. And I had a full-time job just in retail. Since I was the... I'm not one for talking finances and I was the one with all the funds, we really didn't have a lot of conversations back then because we stayed in a really, really cheap apartment. So it wasn't that difficult to...

live the life we wanted without actually thinking about anything. And it seems like you were on the upswing with your income at that point as well. Yes. Okay. Yes. All right. So at what age did the roles reverse where you, Stacey, started making more money? 27. So you started making more than him. What changed when you started making more than him?

I made the life decisions, like anything that was a financial life decision. So we had this huge lump sum for a down payment. And then we went to find another home. I made the decisions around how we saved for that, how much we put down. Did you get Jesse involved in those decisions? I'm like, I don't remember. Probably not. Probably very little. Yeah. It's more like I do all the homework.

Who is the one who tracks the spending, makes sense of the spending, manages the spending?

Stacey. Stacey. Okay. Who's the one who plans investments, decisions about big... Okay. That's Stacey. So Stacey, you do everything with the money. Yes. Everything. So I'm very much a type A planner, organized. You don't say. No. Shocking. So you do the homework. What does that mean, homework? We had a lump sum of money. How much? I said...

I can't remember. 200 grand. You know, it was up to me to figure out like, where could we find it for the home? What was going to be the best value so that we could live the life we wanted to live? And it was up to you because what? Jesse is not a planner. Oh, Jesse, would you agree with that? Yes. I'm very fly by the seat of the pants. And Jesse, what is your role as it relates to money in your relationship? Uh,

Not a lot. You know, I once remember I hired a consultant when my business was in trouble. And he came in, he took a look at all the numbers, and he said, tell me what you were doing when your business was at its peak. And tell me why you stopped. So I walked him through all the initiatives that we used to do, and I laid out all the very rational reasons that we stopped it. The cost of revenue was too high for this program, etc. He gave it some thought, and he said, I recently spoke to another CEO. Business is also in trouble.

And he had very good reasons for every decision that he made, just like you. You can have all the right reasons and still get the wrong outcome.

In Stacey and Jesse's case, they both have stories that are not serving them and certainly not getting them the outcome they want, or at least Stacey wants. Stacey describes herself as type A, which by the way, is not really a thing. And they both agree that Jesse is bad with money. But how would they ever know? They've never really given Jesse responsibility and accountability over money itself. You grew up.

Poor or lower middle class? Lower middle class. And what about you, Stacey? What did you grow up? Both. Lower middle class. You grew up the same? Yeah. Are both your parents together or are they separated? No, they separated when I was five. Yeah. Who'd you live with primarily? My mother. Okay. And what's your mom like? She is also very...

cautious about her money and spending. We both were raised by immigrant mothers and we were both raised to be like, make the most of what you have, work really hard.

to have what you have and like, don't take stuff for granted. Jesse takes that really to heart. And I think I'm at a point in my life where we were both like that. I think we're on the same page. I don't think we'd be where we are today if we didn't have that mentality when we were younger. What do you remember her saying about money growing up? Well, we didn't like enjoy anything. Like we didn't go on vacations. Yeah.

Um, we went on one, uh, my entire childhood. Yeah. Like my parents sacrificed a lot so that they could help pay for my university, but I'm proactive where, so my, uh, my mom and I think my dad, um, who are still together, they think life happens to them. I think I control my own destiny and I've lived my entire life with that MO. So, um, you know, if Jess, where'd you get that from?

Flight or fight mode is like what I live in constantly. So I'm always thinking plan A, B, or C. Do you have siblings? Yes. Are they the same as you? Yes. My brother. Yeah. I have one brother. I'd say, yeah. So you both have taken control of your lives. You sort of carved out your own path.

And would you say that your parents are still more passive? Yes. Wow, that seems to hit a nerve. Yes, bless them. But they are. They drive me crazy. They're passive like what? They don't want to confront any issue. Restaurant sends the wrong thing. They just take it. They never send it back. That kind of thing. Yes, they will get taken advantage of.

They are retired, but like don't take advantage of like their retirement. Yeah. How are they doing financially? I don't know. Why? What? They don't tell us. What? Yeah. So I think most of that. Do you know how much money they made when you were growing up or whatever?

Yeah, I'd say we were lower middle class as well. My dad worked for the government, had an average salary, and it was just him. My mom stayed home. So you decided to take control of your money. You're on top of it. How many different Excel spreadsheets and budgets do you have? Tell the truth.

One, Google's spreadsheet, but it probably has 20 hidden tabs over the last 10 years. How did I know that? And how diligent have you been in tracking your spending? Let me guess. Extremely. Go ahead. Correct. We both have used an app that I love for the last 10 years to track every expense. Anytime we swipe our credit card, it goes in. And I trained Jesse to do this.

Jesse, you do that? Yep. I am not as diligent as her, but yeah, it will track down to the penny, even on cash. And what does that get both of you?

It's very satisfying for me to have the data to tell me what we're spending on. It actually helped us when we were filling in the conscious spending plan. You mean when you personally were filling it in? No, no, no. We did it together. We did it together. What? I don't believe that. 100%. To be clear, she filled it out once by herself prior to having the conversation with your coworker. That's not doing it together. What are you talking about? But we did do it together. Again. Again. Again.

Okay. This is before she told me we were appearing on this podcast. All right, fine. So you track everything. You're tracking like the price of Brussels sprouts over time. So you can trend that for 2010. But like how much we spend on groceries per month, you know, clothing, transportation. How many categories do you have?

More than we should. How many? Tell me. Tell me. Hang on. She's going to pull it up right now. This is amazing. Oh, my God. Look at that. She's like, finally. It's been 13 years and finally someone asked me a question about my app. Okay. Tell me how many categories. Do you want subcategories too as well, Stace? Eight high-level categories. No, I want all of them. Don't BS me.

Oh, wow. She just took like a deep swallow. Probably. Everybody watch. However long this takes, I'm going to run completely dead air. I will burn literally gigabytes right now just watching them. Look, he's still counting. This is unbelievable.

32. 32? Wow, so simple. You ever hear me say that phrase, fight for simplicity in your finances? You ever heard me? Yeah, she's going, yeah. She goes, yeah, that's a great phrase. I chose not to adopt that. That's great for other people, not for us. I'm learning. I'm learning. Okay. This is hilarious, but also fucking insane. Tracking four categories like in my conscious spending plan is good. Tracking 32 categories is absolutely bonkers and it gets you nothing.

Correction, it gets you a sense of control, but does not actually get you closer to your goals. There's an epidemic of us doing things that make us feel productive, but actually accomplish nothing whatsoever. And tracking 32 categories is a perfect example of that. And you can tell because when I asked what they got out of it, there was a very long silence.

Their tracking, excuse me, her tracking is more like scratching a scab off, a little tick that makes her feel better in the temporary moment, but it's certainly not giving them the information as to how to save, how to invest, how to spend their money going forward. It's not serving them, but because she obviously takes a lot of pride in this, it's now become a part of her identity.

One of the worst feelings in life is feeling stuck.

You hear it sometimes with podcast couples here. They feel stuck around their money. I felt stuck in my business. I had made a bunch of decisions years ago and I woke up feeling trapped. So after thinking about it, feeling stuck, not sure what to do, I went to a CEO council that I'm a part of and I just laid it out. And after listening to me, they were like, oh, it's so obvious. You need to change this, move this person over here, change this resource allocation. Boom.

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and join thousands of top senior leaders from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta who have taken the first step towards accelerating their careers. That's sidebar.com, S-I-D-E-B-A-R.com slash R-A-M-I-T. When I was in my early 20s, I was not into clothes. I wore free t-shirts from tech companies, and I really did not want to seem like I tried too hard.

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Elevate your style using Next Level Wardrobe at nextlevelwardrobe.com slash Ramit. That's nextlevelwardrobe.com slash Ramit. So what changed two years ago? We went to couples counseling. Because of this? It was heavily influenced by money and finances and stuff. Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that you did that. Has that been helping? Yes. Oh, yes. I think we still don't have...

the tools in our toolkit to communicate effectively about money. Because I feel like I'm always pulling Jesse along. I want Jesse to be interested in what we're doing with our money. Okay. That's honest. I appreciate that. And Jesse, what do you want in your own words? To be less uncomfortable with money. Can I ask a couple of questions, Jesse? Of course.

Do you want to be engaged with money in the relationship deep down? No, I find finance discussions intimidating, threatening almost at times, awkward. I'm very avoidant to the conversations. And are you avoidant in other parts of life? Yeah, I avoid confrontation quite a lot. Have you made that connection before?

Yes. Oh, yes. All right. So deep down, you don't want to engage with money. That's what you're saying. Yes. That is like my base. But, you know, through counseling, through talking for years, I know that that's not productive and I would like to change. Okay. What's the consequences for both of you if nothing changes? A lot of probably a lot of resentment, maybe divorce. Hmm.

Yeah, I'd say, I'd say resentment. I felt that before the life we've kind of set up in the last year is I handle the finances and work like forever.

jesse works too but like like my job was like bringing in the income and jesse takes care of the household social engagements groceries the things we need for the home i think the other thing too is um we started to talk about like like planning our rich life like what are our goals because when we were younger it was just like

get a home. It was such a big goal for so long. Now it's like, what are the goals we're going to have for the rest of our life? Okay. We want to do this by this year. How do we work backwards from that? And I find that I'm the one who always is figuring out how to work backwards from that. I'd like to see a little bit more input. Because it would mean what? I'm not the only one.

creating the life we want. And if you're the only one, what does that mean? I just don't, that doesn't feel like a relationship. What is it? It's like once it's like, like we're roommates, like we're not creating our life together. She's very much just dragging me along for the ride. Are you enjoying the ride? Yeah.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the comfort that she has given us because she makes considerably more than me and is infinitely better at finances than I am. But I don't want that to be the status quo. Are you uncomfortable in any other parts of life? Parts of life that you're good at? Like last night, I went out to eat Indian food, okay? And I got it really spicy.

So when I eat really spicy food, I start to sweat a lot. My eyelids are sweating. The back of my head is itching. I'm like wiping away like lots of sweat, right? I was physically uncomfortable, but I also love it. I'm good at it. I know how to eat Indian food. There are parts of life sometimes that we are uncomfortable at, but we're good at it or we enjoy it. Do you have any parts of life like that? Yes. So as a musician, I am...

A very crippling stage fright. Okay. And at least I would like to think I am very good at performing. Wow. Great example. I couldn't have named a better one myself. So stage fright, that's very uncomfortable, but somehow you still get up there and you perform and you do well, right? I'd like to think so. Yes. How about you just say yes. Yes. Love it. Okay. So is it possible that you might feel a little uncomfortable with money?

And you might also be a very good participant in your relationship. Yes, I hope so. Okay. How about let's try that again. Is it possible? Yes. Okay. I agree. I agree. It's okay to be uncomfortable when you're first starting to learn about money, talk about money, think about money differently. And you can be a good participant.

To be fair, it was a rather important decision that I had to partake in because I had to close my checking account in order to join hers when we combined our checking accounts. We think of our money as like a communal pot. It's not like Jesse pays a certain percentage based on his income versus me. Who made that decision, by the way? We've always done it that way since we were poorer. I do believe it was your decision, though, when we joined accounts. Okay.

Back in 2012, I believe. Guy pulls out receipts. Part of what I do, I had an old boss that said the art of what I do is facipulation, which is I facilitate, but I'm really manipulating people around a vision. Wow, that's so interesting. Any connection to what's going on here? Anyone? Okay. Do you see my point? Yeah. Yeah.

You take something and say, here we go. This is what I want to do. And you even use words like, this is what we want to do. We set a budget. Yeah. Is it working for you? Well, I'd say the budget has worked pretty well. We do pretty well with our lives. The unintended consequence was Jesse's story.

passive viewer versus a participant do you want him to be no what role are you playing in jesse not speaking up forthrightly about what he wants well because i'm in control and probably because like we've been together for 18 years just our life is an example jesse makes uh what

20% of what I make. So like the life he has is from my labor. You know, California has had a drought for many years. And this year, suddenly there was a ton of rain. And all of a sudden people realized that California is not capturing the rainwater. The water just flows right out to the ocean. And everyone said, what? We need to capture this rainwater.

Well, the system was designed decades ago to get rainwater out to the ocean as quickly as possible. And guess what? That is exactly what the infrastructure does. Efficiently and quickly. Like California, Stacey is getting exactly what she designed for. Careful tracking over their spending, which she does. Total control over their money, for her.

decisions they ostensibly make together, but she really makes. She's getting everything she designed for, except the one thing she claims she wants, for the two of them to do it together. If we both have goals, I want a partner who participates equitably in achieving those goals. Do you know if he has goals? Jesse, do you have goals? I have...

I have goals with my business and that's about it in my life at the moment. I'm not sure what else to say. What do you think hearing that, Stacey? It's a symptom of like, Jesse doesn't really think ahead and just kind of like, life happens day by day. We'll figure it out. Why does that concern you?

Because then you're never thinking of how life can be better. I try and get Jesse to dream bigger. You try to get him to dream bigger. How do you do that? By providing. I have worked really hard to provide a life so that he doesn't have to worry about money as much so that he can do something more adventurous. So he just started a business last year and I encouraged him to do that.

Because he was working retail and I'm like, you can't work retail forever. When you say to him, you can't work retail forever, what message are you communicating to him? I'm probably communicating that the path he's chosen is not...

ideal or like it won't lead to success it like won't make you happy forever um it'll wear you down it was wearing on his body did you think that he knew that deep down that retail was probably not good for him physically probably deep down uh-huh but he wasn't making a change was he no and so you decided to what shove him off a cliff well let's ask jesse

Jesse, take us back to the time where you were working retail. How much were you making back then? 65K at the very end. Okay. And did you enjoy the job? I enjoyed the job up until COVID happened. And then we basically became a warehouse. Even though I was retail management, they basically treated me like a workhorse and I broke my body. You're still recovering from that now?

Yeah, two years later. Still, I'm on the better end of it, but yes. I'm sorry to hear that. So you were kind of put into this labor role, and that was tough on you. How long did you do that for? Six years. In that one position. Sorry, for that one company. I had been retail for two decades. Okay. Oh, you'd been retail for two decades? Thereabouts, yeah.

Okay. Did you enjoy it for two decades? Yeah, I thought I was pretty good at selling stuff. Great. And what would you say to her about your day at work? Of course. So as Stacey's already familiar, but I'll say it again. My manager at the time didn't come in today, called out, and I had to do her job, my job,

and another probably at 10 other jobs and I'm not getting paid for this and I've complained to her boss about this for the umpteen time uh and nothing is changing Stacy go ahead and respond the way you used to respond have you tried oh that's all I need that's all I need thank you very much what do you notice is happening in that dynamic

One person is venting. One person is trying to problem solve. Imagine that someone shoves you one time, 10 times. Imagine they shove you for 18 years. At a certain point, it becomes hard enough to even remember how to walk on your own. Yeah. You think that might be happening here? Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head. Hmm.

You two are talking past each other. Stacey's looking off into the orbit right now. She's realizing- Because I did this today. She did it today. I'm pushing him off the cliff again. It's highlighted that I have years of habit to break. Jesse, you see the issue? You have no fingerprints on your finances at all. You're merely a passive observer in your financial life. And she doesn't like it.

And if she gets hit by a bus tomorrow, you're fucked. Actually, he's not. That is a conversation we have had. Life insurance.

What do you mean? He can get a big old life insurance check. That doesn't mean he's going to know how to use it. That's true. Stacey controls everything financially related in their relationship and therefore disempowers Jesse. When Jesse has a problem, she tries to solve it, thus further disempowering him. This is a classic example, only it's usually with the genders reversed.

And Stacey really has a massive blind spot around how she's helping Jesse. Even in the last comment where I pointed out that Jesse would be screwed if she got hit by a bus, her response was actually not. She really believes that handing over a check from her life insurance would help Jesse, who's functionally unable to deal with money in his 30s.

Her disempowerment has lots of costs that are totally invisible to her. But I think she's starting to realize them. And Jesse plays a part in this. He's sitting back, relaxing. Stacey's running around, tracking 32 categories. Why would he change? Life is good. The dynamic is really what stands out to me. So in order to understand it more, let's take a look at the numbers.

Their combined gross monthly income is $19,867. Their gross annual income is $238,000. Assets, 1.32 million. Investments, 319,000. Savings, 50,000. Their debt mortgage is 435,000, therefore bringing their net worth to $1.25 million.

How do you feel about $1.2 million in your 30s? I think I've done very well for myself. Okay. And I hope to grow it further in the next 30 years. Good. All right. That's a good answer. I love that answer. It's very confident. Did it feel real to you to say? No. A lot of it is in our house, so not a whole lot of it is liquid. So what does that mean?

When I say the number aloud, my first thought is, wow, we're doing pretty well for our age, where we're living. But then my second thought is not a lot of it is accessible or usable, even in retirement. You like to worry? Less so than Stacey, but yes, still. What do you get out of it? Out of worrying? Yeah. I...

i worry a lot that what you had just mentioned and stacy and i've had that very same conversation many times before that if she suddenly is out of the picture for whatever reason i am in a lot of trouble because if she were hit by a bus

By the way, I love this morbid conversation where we're talking about one person's premature death who just happens to be sitting right in front of us. We're okay. We're both European. We talk about death a lot. Fantastic. All right, great. So if she were to get hit by a bus, you still have $1.2 million and you're a young, able-bodied guy.

So it's not the number that concerns me. It's that everything beneath it, which is you would have no idea how to manage it on a day-to-day basis. No idea how life insurance works. No idea what investments are or how they interact with your savings.

none of it would you agree i would agree and more to that effect i also don't even have a lot of working income uh because i just started a business in a market that is not known for making any money and how long are you going to go on that business before deciding if it's worth it or not uh ideally until retirement uh the the goal is to uh grow it through expansion okay great

How much do you need to make from this business? In order for me to maintain where we are now? I don't know. Do you have a goal for how much you're going to make with this business? My goal is to double that within the year. $4,000 a month. Okay, that's good. And would you be happy? Would you be satisfied at that number?

I would, yes. But again, I would be happy with that number if I still have a loving and healthy wife. All right. Stacey, do you see what the dynamic that you have co-created has done here? She's nodding. Say it out loud. I think what I heard was, one, I don't... If Jesse does not have the means to...

manage financially if I'm not around. And then two, what I heard is with regards to his business, just like small goals, a small sense of what could be. Yeah. Like 4,000 a month. Well, impressive for a business to start. I mean, Jesse used to make 65,000 in retail. Like shouldn't a business make more than you can make working retail, Jesse? Yes. I'm not blaming you.

You haven't been given the authority. You haven't been given access. You haven't even been encouraged to take control of some of these aspects of finance, but it's now caused some really serious effects that are not even obvious right now. Let's also remember you're not in dire financial straits. You have tons of money, $238,000 a year. Is that a lot or a little? What do you think?

I'm proud of what I have achieved personally in terms of like my own career success. But I never feel good about money. Yeah. Because I always think they're like, we need more buffer. Right. Oh, if you make an extra 50K, maybe you'll feel good then. I won't. No, I absolutely won't. Who taught you that?

You did. That's so crazy though. But what if you make a hundred K, would you feel better then? No, no, because it will, I'll never feel like it's enough. I'll continue to worry. Like I, if I was richer, I'd be like the folks you have on the podcast who have like 5 million in their thirties. And I would still be crazy. I could literally calculate the exact month that you're going to have that much. And you're right. You will come back on the show and feel exactly that way. It's a guarantee that,

Unless we make some changes. Yes. What do you think those changes and broad strokes have to be, Stacey? I need to share responsibilities and actually share them and hand them off, not-

not continue to partially own them. I think the other thing, why, why I think, I don't know if Jesse was feeling this way, but why I was quiet just now is like, I always thought encouraging Jesse to start his own business was such a good, like, I thought I did a good thing. Um, and I'm feeling like I didn't do a good thing. Also because I, I probably, um,

like coach coach him in the direction to go Instead of like really just letting him Make his own decisions and then now he doesn't dream big enough. Hmm How would you describe the way you feel right now? Uh Like mad at myself mad why mad because I don't think I realized what I created What did you create an environment? where

you know, Jesse doesn't see the big vision of what he's capable of doing, whether that's finances. And I'm sorry, Jesse, love you so much. But like, it's so clear that you're so anxious on this conversation, the deeper we get in, because like you're using like buzzwords to try and like talk effectively instead of just being like you're yourself. And I feel like I created that.

How do you receive that, Jesse? A little confused, a little frustrated. The way I've structured my business, it likely will never grow beyond a certain point. How much? I don't know exactly what the dollar amount is, but probably not much more than $4,000 to $6,000 a month. I know that that causes Stacey a lot of anxiety and pain. Do you want to talk to her about it? I feel conflicted, Stacey, because you...

pushed me, I feel rightly so into pursuing this business. And I am happy that you did. And I am happy with the company that I've created for myself. But it also pains me to know that I will be unable to financially contribute as much as

You ideally would like as much as I ideally would like, like in a perfect world. So it's difficult. Do you have a question for her? Go ahead. Ask the question that you're afraid to ask. When I lost my job and you said, Jesse, start your business. Do something that you love. You have a number of hobbies. Make money doing one of them.

And I pursued it. And I felt I was upfront about how it would not be a great moneymaker. But I need to know if you understand that. The thing I'm going to push back on you is I think you're self-inducing that limitation before you start. You're saying it's never going to be bigger. You create your own destiny.

And I didn't ask for a specific number. And you don't have to make a certain amount. But what really pains me in this conversation is I'm worried I created an environment where you're not even... It's not about trying. It's that you're... I don't know if...

you really believe that having one location of your rehearsal studios or two locations is enough, or you could even dream bigger. I feel like you're hemming yourself in before you can even explore the possibilities. It's not really about what I expect because we can live off my income. That's why I pushed you to do that. If $4,000 is as much you're going to make in the next year, and then that might be the next 10 years, um, uh,

I'm fine with that. Honestly, if I were in Jesse's shoes, I would be really confused right now. First, Stacey told me that, yeah, it's okay. I don't earn a lot of money. Then she told me I should start a business, which I did. Then she wants me to earn more money. But a few seconds later, she says, it's okay if I don't earn more money. Stacey's message is that she wants control, but she also wants Jesse to participate. But when he tries...

She says, not like that. This is all very confusing. What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two? Bilingual. And what do you call someone who speaks one language? American.

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It's quite the weight off my chest to hear that out loud. It feels like it's always something moving over my head where I worry because Stacey is the kind of person that is always concerned about money and not having enough of it. And to your point, it's like, well, we make X amount. You've structured it so that we are stable. But it seems like the narrative is always...

We need to make more. We need to make more as a household. So it's good to hear you say out loud that it's okay if I fail, essentially, with income. Was that your intention, Stacey? Is that what you meant to communicate? No. I meant to say, well, I mean, yes, it's okay to fail. But what I meant to say is don't make...

decisions based on what I say. I want to hear your own thought. I think in this conversation, I've heard you pare it back. Some of the things I've said or Ramit says, what I'm missing is like your perspective. Like, what do you want? Because when I hear you say, like, I'm doing this business, I'm making a small amount of money, but I'm taking care of the home. I fed you that narrative. I don't know if that's what you really want. And I don't know if you're being honest that that's what you want.

Is that honestly what you want? That is honestly what I want. I enjoy cooking. I enjoy being at home because Stacey works from home. So I get to see her a lot more than I used to when we were both working out in the world.

What else? I guess it'd be like the fruits of your labor. Again, I'm sorry for using buzzwords, but it's something that I can see that there's an A to a B. Now that's an honest answer. I like that. That's a perfectly respectable answer. You're right. I don't get that in my business either. There's always projects that are ongoing, blah, blah, blah. It's rare that it's just done and clean and perfect.

Stacey, do you think that you're having unrealistic expectations for Jesse to suddenly become a long-term career planner? Yes. How long have you been trying to get him to think like you? Forever, probably, since we met, I'm sure. You think he picks up on that? Yes. Because there's this narrative that he believes you need to have more money. Is that true? Yeah.

Yeah. Jesse thinks I'm like money obsessed. And like, as if I'm, we've had this discussion before. He's like, you're obsessed with money to the point of like, it's like greed. But what we've talked about in the past, and I guess, I guess Jesse is like still not clear. Maybe it's like what I'm, why I obsess about money is for safety. I'm obsessed about it from a sense of like security. Yeah.

And I want to just make sure there's enough, not just to survive, but to be able to like retire comfortably. And is obsessing going to help you achieve that? It has so far. So you should keep doing it? No. Why not? It's gotten you here. Got a million bucks in the bank. Why not just keep doing it? Obsess and make 3 million.

Because clearly it's caused the sacrifice. What I'm losing is in our relationship. I've created this dependent relationship that's not sustainable. You are, in your own words, obsessed with money because it provides you safety. And you what? You want to change that obsession or you want to keep going? I'm not asking a loaded question. I'm legitimately curious.

I do not want that. Continually optimizing won't change anything. You optimize a lot? Yes. Like? Like I'm always looking at like, how much am I putting away in our investments? And I like want to increase how much we're putting away to retirement so that in, I think it's like 10 years,

will have enough that we'll need for retirement. And then I don't have to worry about putting so much away. Oh yeah. Then you're going to stop worrying. Yeah. Come on. Why are you, why are you doing this to yourself? You listen to every episode of the podcast. You've read my book, right? Yes. Do you think I use the word obsessed with money management? No, it's boring. It should be like, what would you cook anything simple like eggs or something at home?

Yeah. Are you obsessed with eggs? No. You throw the egg on the thing, put a little butter, it's done, right? It's a utility. At a certain level of money mastery, you don't even have to be a higher earner, but at a certain level of knowledge and mastery over your psychology, money management itself is really boring and it should be.

The problem is that there's actually a real cost to doing that with your money. What might you get out of changing your approach to money? I feel like I have everything to gain. Then why haven't you done it already? Because I've worn, you know, like the finances have been like my cross to bear willingly. Cross to bear? Like as if it's a negative thing? Yeah. Or like, like it's like, it's, it's my responsibility.

tracking a budget for what tweaking a spreadsheet for what and also having all these negative conversations where you're always lecturing him yeah you really should make more money blah blah blah and then you don't even care if he makes more money it's like what's the point yeah is there a way for you to have fun with money

We are going on a trip to Italy in about two months. What the fuck? Hold on. That's awesome. Okay. Round of applause. All right. I'm getting the sense that I might have been wrong, but let's play it out. That is awesome. How long are you going for? Three weeks. Just five, three weeks. Yes. Damn. All right. Cool. Who came up with the idea?

This was a big plan. It's been planned for like two years. Wow. Okay. And you both are excited. Have you ever been to Italy before? No. So cool. All right. What are you two in particular excited about?

I generally just travel. As Stacey mentioned earlier in the conversation, when she was growing up, she went on a vacation. I did not go on my first vacation until I was 22. Where'd you go? Azores. It's where my family's from. Portugal. Portugal. So you're going on this trip. And has this gotten kind of the juices flowing in terms of like, ooh, where else might we go?

Exactly that. Well, okay. So Italy is the big one for this year. Next year is renovating our backyard and redoing our fencing at the house. So started thinking about that. Wow. That's so cool. And then the year after that is Japan. Yeah. Is there some reason that you take one trip per year? We don't even do that. Yeah. Is there a reason for that?

I mean, it's not like you're making like $20,000 a year, you make $240,000 a year.

Uh, because when I look at our numbers, I think we're behind on saving for retirement. So I, I want to focus more money towards retirement than travel. Yeah. Good. The, the one thing that neither of you are really excited about, you want to focus on that. And the thing that, and the thing that lights you two up, let's, let's wait another 10 years to do that. Yeah.

Y'all realize how ridiculous that sounds? Look at the rest of this CSP. We didn't even finish it. Your fixed costs are 39% of your take home. That's one of the lowest numbers I've seen on this show. 39%. That's good. Do you realize that? Yes. Maybe too good. It's actually, it can be so good that it's bad. I'm not saying that's the case, but I'm just saying, wow, you got a lot of extra money to play around with every month. Your investments, 21% of take home. That is extremely good.

At 21%, it tells me either you're way too frugal or you have a pretty high income. In your case, I think you have a very good income. That's fantastic. Above 25%, I would start to get a little wary. I would say, why aren't they spending some money on life? I want to double that number. I'm not surprised. All right. And you can. And if you double it, you will certainly achieve your goals faster and you will be miserable and you will cost immeasurable, unmeasurable money.

costs to your relationship. Number one, you're both depriving yourselves of enjoying these experiences. Taking one trip every three years makes no sense. And second, actually not giving ownership. This is an amazing opportunity to give ownership to Jesse. Say, Jesse, I notice you love traveling. I love traveling. I would love it if you would be the person in charge of traveling, helping us schedule our travel. Can we have a conversation about that?

He's nodding. He's going, yeah, he's getting excited. I see that smile. Okay. It's a lot of layers here. I find it very interesting. What do you think? So when we started this conversation, you said, what did you want to get out today? I'm like, I'm hoping you see something we can't see. And you did. You've seen that I've optimized the system. I'm getting exactly what I put in and reaping it. And I've created that for a really long time.

What I'm recognizing is if I look at this as a scale, maybe I have this 100% optimized. What I'd actually like is maybe 80. And there's certain areas where I would value Jesse's involvement, but it doesn't have to be in the details and we can balance it out more effectively. Okay. That's pretty, that's pretty perceptive. I agree. Jesse, what do you think so far?

very much the same thing. I felt Stacey had a narrative she wanted coming in. Which was? I think she wanted to have a conversation on how to better optimize our savings for our retirement and how to enjoy the latter half of our life. Not just like 65 plus, but like 40 plus. Really? Is that true, Stacey?

Well, there were two sides to my... What are the sides? Well, I knew there were definitely hangups we had about money and our dynamic that needed a lens. And then the other thing that... This is the problem that I'm mostly worried about when we talk about finances. I'm worried that we will not have enough for retirement and that we're enjoying life enough. Yeah. Okay. You're worried about retirement and you're not worried about the fact that

One partner is totally disempowered and disengaged from money. It's just another, this happens virtually every episode. You already know the answer to your question about retirement. I'll answer it anyway, but it's not a retirement issue. That's not going to be your challenge in your relationship. Your challenge is staring you right in front of the face. What is it? That it's one-sided. Yeah. And Jesse, what else? Codependent. That's a good way to put it.

But when you say codependent, you mean what? Stacey has created a system where I don't have to be involved, but I very much should be, and she very much would like me to be. Yes, yes, that's accurate.

So what would happen if you just flip the switch tomorrow and both of you reverse roles? Stacey, you're keeping the house clean. Look at it. She's already laughing. And you better keep that kitchen spotless according to Jesse's standards. And Jesse, you're managing all finances. You're planning, retiring, making all decisions. What would happen? Jesse Fletcher

i mean i would i would like to think sorry you want me to speak more confidently i apologize uh i would

likely look at the budget as written and try to stick to it as closely as possible. I think I can handle that. I think he would learn and figure it out. Before I get to the follow-ups from Stacey and Jesse, which are fascinating, I'd like to ask you to do two things which really help. The first, go to Apple Podcasts and leave a written review that really helps us. And second, get on the podcast newsletter where I

where I share new material every single Saturday. Go to iwt.com slash podcast newsletter and you will find a lot of material that I never share publicly. All right, let's get to the follow-ups. The first from Stacey.

I got out of the conversation what I had hoped, to see something I myself was blind to. I walked away understanding that I had created a system for an inequitable partnership in our finances, and I've got work to do with Jesse to unpack and rebuild that relationship. I watched the first two episodes of the new show, and I do not want to have the relationship Matt and Amani displayed. I was reinforcing an unbalanced power dynamic that I did not actually want.

My biggest takeaway was that I have been swooping in to save the day when it comes to money. It's created an environment of intimidation instead of curiosity. The day after your call, I started to change that. We started to take steps to give Jesse skin in the game when it comes to our finances.

We readjusted our CSP yesterday evening. Instead of looking at our total income, we looked at Jesse's income and broke out the household spending under his responsibility and allocated investment savings proportional to his income. He's going to pay for and own the budget for anything household related. He will also set up a recurring deposit for his investment account based on 20% of his income. We also rebooked our regular financial check-ins. We rescheduled it to a date we could commit to. Jesse will be taking ownership of the agenda.

And on and on, they go on to share more and more details. We looked at what we want to achieve in the next year and whether our savings targets would get us there. This left us with a much healthier 21% guilt-free spending allocation in our CSP. Thank you for the coaching and guidance. Step-by-step, I know Jesse and I will create a more equitable financial partnership.

Jesse wrote a follow-up and said, my feeling before going into the conversation was a fear that I was going to be blamed for not being involved with our finances and accused of being disinterested. I was surprised by your observations of our relationship dynamics over the past 18 years and how they fostered these feelings of anxiety, avoidance, and disinterest.

I was even more surprised by your insistence that we needed to start spending more money on ourselves in the everything else category of the CSP. The following night, we sat down and discussed our budget, and I'm now handling our day-to-day spending, including groceries, pets, house supplies, etc. We have a long road ahead of us, but we will not be skipping our monthly meetings any longer.

Fantastic work to Jesse and Stacey. Thank you for the courage in coming on this show. We all appreciate it. And for everyone who's listening and watching, go to iwt.com slash podcast newsletter because I've got new material to share with you this Saturday and every Saturday afterwards. Thanks for listening to I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I'm Ramit Sethi. Please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you haven't read I Will Teach You To Be Rich, my book, pick up a copy. You can get it at any bookstore or any library, and it will show you the specific tactics for how to build the I Will Teach You To Be Rich system into your personal finances.