170. “We’re worth $1M in our 30s, but we’re missing out on life”
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Today's conversation is a really special one. It was a conversation that I had live in front of hundreds of people at one of my recent events at the Foundry in Philadelphia. I've been doing these live events across the country recently, and on today's episode, you're going to hear me speak to these guests right from on stage and go into the audience to get their reaction. Now, I'm going to be doing lots more events like this when I go on tour for my new book, Money for Couples.

And you can hear the energy in the room on today's episode, but I'll tell you that nothing beats being in the room in person. If you want to know when the book tour is announced and when I'll be in your city next, grab the link for the waitlist and a link to pre-order Money for Couples in the show notes below.

Tonight we're going to meet a couple, Noor and Jabron. I wasn't sure what to expect when you're open like this in front of a large audience. They live in a low cost of living city in the Midwest. It felt so natural. And I also felt like...

Like he was just rooting for us. And the question they have is when can they start living their rich life? Parenting, working. Like sometimes I just want life to be like easier. It's hard because when we have these arguments, like everything she says is right. Are you giving advice to yourself right now? What's happening? I also grew up fairly poor. Probably gathered that by now, right? I got that in about seven seconds. I'll get them up. No need, no need. Okay, that's interesting. Has that happened before? That actually happened a few weeks ago. Oh.

What do you think about that number? Is that a lot? Is that little? This is a trap, by the way. We also lived in his parents' rental where we paid $500 a month. Let me go ahead and throw you a lifeline. Was that a lot of money back then?

We could do it. You got to wait till you have $9 million? Oh, that's true. Do you? I'm asking. You see me talk with couples and with people on Netflix, on the podcast. And I figured, why don't we just do it live here tonight? Let's welcome Noor and Gibran. Noor, you wrote...

My husband always makes it seem like we're broke and can't spend. Why can't we enjoy life a little? Tell me about that. So you say to focus on the big things so we don't have to think about like the lattes and things like that. And I think that we focus on the big things and the little things. But if we focus on the big things, can't we just enjoy DoorDash sometimes? Noor, I...

I saw the application you sent in and I heard that you love convenience. Do you spend money on convenience? I try to. Like what? So we have two little kids. So life is very busy right now and life is really messy. So sometimes I'd like to spend money on like cleaners or HelloFresh or just something like that. But he doesn't share that value, I guess.

So I try to spend money on convenience. One time our house was really messy. We had a lot of visitors and stuff. And like our kids just like throw all the food on the floor. So I'm like, maybe we should just get cleaners. Like, you know, it'd been months. As soon as I like said the words, he was in the basement and came up with the mop. So I try to spend money on convenience, but I'm not always successful. And how old are the kids? Three and one. Wow. Yeah. Okay. All right. Do you love cleaning, Gibran?

It's important, right? You have to have a clean house. Let me ask that question again. Do you love cleaning? I love cleaning some things. I enjoy vacuuming. It's a nice Sunday afternoon activity. I got you. Okay. All right. Do you have a regular cleaner right now? No. No. Okay. What about travel? Do you like to travel? You do? Yes. Who likes it more? Probably me. Okay. So would you say it's pretty frequent that you go and take a trip?

Up until recently, all of our travel would be like either for weddings or to visit my family because they live out of state. So more like leisure vacations we put on the back burner for many years. How many years? I mean, probably the last three, four years, to be honest. I mean, when you have a young kid and you're traveling for family and then, you know, you're in that era where like a lot of millennials are getting married, right? Yeah. So that's kind of the whole extent of your travel. Yeah.

I would disagree. I think that we have put travel in the back burner since we've been together since 2016. Why is that?

Before we had kids, he started a event service company. It was mostly on the weekends when we would travel and he would see money lost. So he, and when he started the company, he was like a worker of the company rather than a business owner, which I understand. But he wouldn't want to like turn it off for a weekend or for a week for us to go anywhere because he's like, oh, then I'll lose $1,500. I'll lose a thousand dollars or whatever. Did you say exactly those words?

So something, something akin to that. Yeah. I mean, it's like if I'm not there working, yeah, you know, there's in the beginning when you start a business, right, you're working it. So yeah, something, something similar to that. Okay. So you went a few years without traveling. If there were no young children, do you think you would have traveled?

Well, when we didn't have young children, he had his event service company. That was his child. So we didn't travel before then. It was the business. And then we got married in COVID and had kids. So there was just kind of like the stack up of excuses, if you will. If Noor said to you, Gibran, hey, let's go eat out. What would you say? Hmm.

Maybe. Sure. I'd say sure. I mean, she doesn't... I don't think she... That's not like a huge... I mean, you don't ask... We don't go out a ton. You don't ask to go out a ton. But yeah, we do every now and then. Okay. But...

Yeah. What's, what's not being said right now? I don't know what the hell's going on here. We don't, we don't, we don't go out to eat that much because it's not important to you or health reasons. I'll let her answer. It's not important to me. I enjoy cooking at home. All we ever buy is fresh vegetables and, and you know, produce meats and, and cook 80% of our meals. So if she's like, let's go to have Thai food, you're going to be like, hold on. I have a papaya.

in the kitchen right now. You start chopping. That actually happened a few weeks ago with a bell pepper. You can already tell that these live audience sessions bring a totally different energy to the conversation. I'd love for you to be at my next event, so make sure you get on the wait list using the link in the show notes below. The people in the audience can see tiny differences in body language and facial expressions.

They can also sense when the energy changes, so they can catch on to little funny gestures or contradictions. Some early clues that I noticed with them, she wants to hire a cleaner, he grabs a mop from the basement. They haven't traveled much because of their young children, but when I ask if they traveled before they had kids, they had another reason they didn't. And finally, she wants to eat out sometimes, but he grabs a bell pepper from the fridge.

Our son plays soccer every Wednesday and my in-laws come and cheer him on and they come over for dinner after. And I'm like, we don't have any dinner cooked. Let's just door dash something. And I actually wanted to door dash Thai food. And he was like, no, no, no, I got it. And so he cut up a bell pepper and then like Trader Joe's sausage and we had rice. I was like, this is so sad. That's a balanced meal, first of all. I appreciate the macros on that. But aside from that...

Like, this is a common thing, right? She asks you, let's do X, and you're like, I got it. Yeah, that is indeed a common thing. Gibran, how much money do you make as a household? I don't know, $250 annually or something like that? $260, somewhere in that range. Is that right? Yeah. I forget how much we put down. All right, first of all, nice. Amazing. So you're in your early 30s.

$250,000 a year and you live in a low cost of living city. We had two kids. I work from home. So we were able to like keep them home from childcare for 10 months for each of them. And I calculated, it saved like almost $30,000 between the two kids. But yet we still can't like door dash or get cleaners. And I'm like, oh, like-

parenting, working. Like sometimes I just want life to be like easier. I want to sit down and watch Netflix. I want to like have somebody else deep clean the house, you know, things like that. Whereas he like does not lose stamina and like is so laser focused on like the long-term goal, which I don't even know what that is because he doesn't want to retire early. He loves working. So I'm like, what are we doing this for? We'll be right back.

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At times. You remind me of me. At times, yeah. Like I can just work through it. Yeah. What's the problem? I'll just grind it out. Do it, yeah. Okay, all right.

I don't think most people have truly seen a machine at work. I had a friend who would literally sit at his desk and work on his electrical engineering problem set for 8 to 10 hours straight, just literally sitting there working. We would call him catatonic, we called him a machine, he just shrugged. He later became an investment banker working over 90 hours a week and literally sleeping with his blackberry on his chest.

Now, I share this because an identity of being a machine or being able to grind it out or power through it, that's a recurring pattern on this show. It works for a while, but ultimately, the idea that you can just simply grind it out eventually causes problems.

And also he didn't feel it because he was still working from our house. Like his life wasn't interrupted or as tiring as mine. Because of childcare? Yeah. And like nursing throughout the night and then signing on at night to work. Like he was scrolling and I was like writing reports, you know? You said we can't order DoorDash. Can you?

I think so. But I think it's hard for me to do something without like, and maybe that's a me thing without feeling like he's like on the stage. Like, yeah, let's do it. You could open up your phone. Yes. Click the tie thing. What would happen if you did that?

I think I'd feel guilty if he wasn't on board. Even for something that's like 40 bucks. I don't know. On board means what? Like, yeah, get the DoorDash. Okay, like enthusiastic response. Yes. Okay, what do you think about that, Jabron? I think that's fair. Even if I was like, sure, order a tie. She'd be like, do you really want to order a tie? Wait a minute, what? I'd be like, what do you mean? I said, yes, just order a tie. Like,

Okay, that's interesting. Has that happened before? I'm sure. I'm sure it has. Yeah. Fair? Yeah. Where he said, like, go for it. And you're like, yeah. Yeah. What is that? What do you think that dynamic is between the two of you? In the moment, I may be saying yes, but she knows that, you know, ultimately who I am. And so she's kind of holding back there. Yeah. What do you think, Noor? I think that's true. Mm-hmm.

Well, I mean, I also grew up fairly poor, so it was always like fix things around the house, save money, cook. You probably gathered that by now, right? I got that in about seven seconds. It's very, very, very ingrained, right? I'll get the mop. No need. No need. Yeah. Okay. So you grew up fairly poor? Yeah. Yeah. Did your parents immigrate here? Yeah. My dad did. Yeah. Your dad did. Okay. Yeah. What do you remember about your dad in particular?

He he worked all the time. I mean, they didn't have degrees. So it was working, you know, to make any money they could. But my parents always taught me about money growing up, like, here's our mistakes. Here's what we should have done. You know, even today, my mom's like or not today, but more recently, she'll show like, here's what our Social Security is like. See what happens when you don't make any money, you know?

She says that now? Yeah. She's like, you don't retire with a whole lot of money, right? So yeah. What do you take away from that? When she says that to you, how do you receive it? I think, you know, I want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for a good future. Your dad's still with us? Yeah. Okay. How's he do with money now? He's retired. You know, he's making his money and he's like, got to go get a job at the grocery store. You know, got to go do something to make some extra money. Does he need it?

Probably not. Probably not right now. But he still kind of thinks like that. Go four hours a day or something. He wants to, but we keep telling him, no, you don't need to. It's not necessary. Don't do it. Don't do it. Does he listen? So far. Okay. All right. Noor, what do you remember? What phrases do you remember about money when you were growing up? My family immigrated here as well, and they were upper middle class in India, and then they immigrated to India.

the states and they were poor lived in with like government assistance and things like that but we're both very educated and had professional degrees so we're not in that state for for very long my parents didn't talk about money it was always just like focused on like

pride and reaching your potential and doing good work and contributing to society. And education is the key to freedom. So I think actually my mom would always say freedom isn't free. You have to work hard. So just like focus on a lot of freedom and education being the path to freedom. Okay. Did you eat out when you were a kid? No. No.

We can see some clear lines connecting their backgrounds with their money attitudes and behaviors today. Gibran's dad worked like a machine to provide. He's picked up the same approach. He also grew up with an active money education, and he's brought that into today's relationship. She never got to eat out as a kid, and she resents that they don't do it now. Before we go on with Noor and Gibran, stay with me as I bring the audience into the conversation on their family backgrounds with money.

I love this question about what phrases did you hear from your family growing up? I want to come around to the audience. What's one phrase you remember from your childhood about money? Just raise your hand if you want to share it. We'd love to hear from you. Hold on one second. Money doesn't grow on trees. People like us can't afford that. It's only money.

And what does that mean? It's only money. What was the implication? I'd gotten into a car accident and I had to pay a deductible. I was maybe 18, 17. It's only money. All right. Round of applause for everyone. Thank you very much. So what about you? Do you have any phrases that stand out from when you were a kid? What do you remember your parents saying about money? Comment below. I'd love to hear what you remember and I will read every single comment to see what you've shared.

We can't afford it. People like us. And after a while, we just kind of accept it. And then we start to believe it. Oh, well, we can't afford it. That's who I am. And when our financial situation changes, our psychology usually doesn't change along with it.

Do you think that that's the case for the two of you? We were just chatting back there about, you know, all the examples of, you know, we live in an old house with wood siding. The wood siding falls off. I've never done siding in my life, but my God, I had my ladder out there, pulled the siding off, you know, figured it all out, you know, and fixed all the siding. So I don't know. That's what we did growing up. That's what I learned and still doing it. Do you want to keep doing that? Not with everything. Not with everything.

I want to interject here because a lot of times people believe that I want everyone to simply delegate out everything from their lives as if I'm trying to mold everyone into me or into my rich life. No, that's why I say your rich life is yours and my rich life is mine. For example, I delegate out certain things but not others. I could hire out the ironing of our clothes but I still iron because I love doing it.

On the other hand, it would make no sense for me to spend hours cleaning our apartment because I don't enjoy it and I don't get fulfillment from it. So we've hired that out along with a personal trainer and an assistant. That's why I asked Gibran if he still wants to be spending time fixing the siding on his house. If he had said yes, I would have said, great, that's your rich life. Fantastic. But since he said no,

Now I dive deeper into the numbers and the psychological reasons that they're still doing something they might actually not need to be doing.

This is the lesson I want you to internalize. There's no virtue in living a smaller life than you have to. Just because you did something in the past doesn't mean you have to continue it because what got you here might not get you there. Think carefully about what your rich life is and update your vision regularly. If you want help on deciding what your rich life is today, grab a copy of my journal from any bookstore or through the link in the show notes below.

Maybe I'm too extreme because I feel like money will come and it's okay to spend money. And so I think that maybe before I might have been a little bit less like, like hold back a little bit more. But now I don't want to say I feel entitled, but I'm like, no, I work hard. We make good money. Like I do want to shop at these places. I do want to spend this money. I want to give my kids exposure to camps and experiences and things like that. Hmm.

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like travel with the company that he has. I mean, there was, there were trips that we didn't go to because he wasn't willing to like turn off a weekend of rentals or something like that or things like that. Um, actually there's several experiences like that where we're like choosing money in the short term. Can we zoom in on that? What was one, what was a trip that you missed because of a weekend of revenue?

Mexico City, 2018. Wow, that rolled right off the tongue. Damn. Okay. I knew that. All right, Jibran, tell us what happened. He's like looking away. He's looking down like, f***.

What happened? That was year two of my business, you know, and it's difficult to manage that idea of like, hey, you know, I could make five, six grand in a weekend or I can make zero and go to Mexico City. And so just that idea of like, man, like that's a lot of money at the time. Right. We were still young. We...

that was, I think right around the time when I paid off my student loans, she was working on paying off her student loans, you know, so it was like in the forefront of our mind. At that time, if you can remember approximately what was your income household income back then? It was a lot less. Probably like I'd go like one,

50, 160, somewhere in that range. Maybe something like that. What do you think about that number? Is that a lot? Is that little? This is a trap, by the way. We didn't have kids. It's probably a lot would be my assumption is what you're going to say. We didn't have kids. Again, when you have... Your dual income, no kids in a low cost of living city making $165,000. Wait, let me add more context. We also lived in his parents' rental where we paid $500 a month. Oh my God.

Let me go ahead and throw you a lifeline. Was that a lot of money back then? Yes. Is there a point where you as a business owner say, okay, like we've made enough. Let's go to Mexico City. That for sure was something I learned from the hard way. Saying no to Mexico City, saying no to my wife or my, she was my girlfriend at the time. But like what, what happened to make you look back and see it as a mistake?

You know, those trips like that experiences, they're not they're not every single weekend. So being able to to pause and, you know, not think about money is the only thing which a lot of times. And that's kind of the psychology issue that she has with me is I was put money in the forefront despite other things.

That last sentence where Gibran says, I always put money in the forefront is how so many of us treat money. We lead with money. We make it the central goal as if a number going up in our spreadsheet is finally going to make us happy, finally going to make us whole. We obsess about money, agonize, worry. But few of us go deeper to even understand what that number means.

And you know what? Even fewer truly realize that money is a small but important part of a rich life. And that importantly, there's so much more than just a number. Does money matter? Of course. Especially if you have a low income and you're struggling. But what you hear over and over is that just simply collecting more money will not automatically make you feel better. Can I tell you a little more context? Yes. So I know...

Something else that I think is in, we don't touch any of the, we have a rental property. We don't touch any of that money and we don't touch the event business money. So I was like, wait, we're making all this extra money, like missing out on life for you to stat like hoard money that not even gonna, we're not even going to spend. And it's in like random accounts. And I don't even know why we are doing this. Investment accounts. So.

So the event rental business is like such a big part of our lives. I like have wanted to like slash them to like get rid of them so they can no longer have this company because I feel like it gets in the way. It took like convincing to turn them off for the weekend of our wedding. Yeah, your mom wanted to leave it on. She was like, we have workers. So his mom and dad helped run the company. So I feel like they are...

perpetuating the money psychology constantly. The money psychology being what? That they have that's been like instilled in him. Money in the forefront, saving, you know, earn it all. Money is the end all be all. Okay. And like we had our two and a half year olds and then we had a newborn and they were like pushing us to potty train my son. And I'm like, I haven't slept like much.

more than two hours. Like I do not have this patience to like potty train this, this little boy who's very jealous and has a lot of tantrums right now. And they're like, well, you'll save money on diapers. I'm like, I have a diaper budget. It's okay. Do they know how much you make? I mean, they know we make good money. I don't think they know how much. Yeah. Do you know what your net worth is? Yeah. What is it? It's, it's close to a million.

Here are their numbers. Assets, $577,000. Investments, $520,000. Savings, $60,000. Debt, $238,000. Total net worth, $919,000.

I think it's amazing. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm happy about it. I'm good. All right, all right. Well, you should. I mean, you've obviously worked really hard, saved, made a lot of sacrifices for sure. That's amazing. It's hard because when we have these arguments, like everything she says is right. And it's hard, right? It's like we're like nickel and diming ourselves to death. And reality, it's like we should be enjoying some things. You know, it's okay if we...

you know spend a little on doordash or lyft or oh we ran out of something it's okay if we pay the extra you know 150 markup on instacart to have it shipped to our house or whatever whatever the percentage are you giving advice to yourself right now what's happening yeah yeah okay is there a but in this sentence no there's no but there's no but then why don't you just do it we do we do we do more recently and that's kind of what she was touching on like in the last two weeks i don't know if that counts no

This is a thing that happens a lot. It's kind of like cleaning your apartment before your house cleaner comes over. Couples will find out they're going to speak to me and suddenly they'll be talking about money and changing their behavior for the first time in their relationship. And what's interesting is when they do this, they finally come talk to me. They minimize their problems. They'll go, it's actually gotten a lot better.

Well, maybe it has. But unless you understand the patterns of what got you there, you'll probably slide right back into those behaviors. He's influenced me a lot, which is great. But I think that it's just gone too far. What have you two talked about in terms of changing it? This is common, by the way. Every couple has something when it comes to their money where the dynamic has gotten off track in some way.

It's in every relationship. And that's okay. That's natural. But it's really hard to recalibrate a relationship, whether it be like, hey, I'm doing 75% of the household tasks, or I don't want to be the only one managing the money, or I don't like the way that we spend money. We spend too much or we save too much. To recalibrate is really hard. So have you had those conversations and how have they gone?

So now we're just trying to have that shift of it's okay if we door dash or it's okay if we pick up something on the way home. So that's probably the biggest shift. And then the other shift that she's trying to, or she has brought up to me more recently, examples are like cleaners or having somebody like mow the grass or something. And when she says that, your response is to turn the lawnmower on?

Well, that's why I have to do it when he's out of town for work. You did that? Yeah. What'd you do? I saw our neighbors were getting their grass cut, so I ran over. And I was like, oh, can you cut our grass? So I was going to not tell him, but then he saw it through the doorbell. Yeah, they ring the bell. Yeah.

Would you be open to paying for somebody to do the lawn mowing? Truthfully, you don't have to say yes because you think I want to hear it. To be honest, mowing the lawn, no, I would not. You want to do it? In general, no. But if we were going to right now, I'd rather pay one of my current business employees to come do it. So you can run it through the business? No. So, I mean, I could help them out. I'd rather help out and give people extra money, extra work that I know that we work with on a regular basis. And it's cheaper. Yeah.

It might be a little cheaper. There's a famous story about someone in self-development. I think it's Jim Rohn who said, the more successful I become, the less I could afford to do things that I used to do. And what he meant was he couldn't afford to spend hours mowing his lawn on the weekend because his time was now so limited that he wanted to spend it with his son.

With Gibran, we could tally up all the things he would rather do himself. Cleaning the house, cooking, fixing the siding, cutting the grass. But I guarantee if I asked him what their rich life is, very few of those things would be on the list. Do you think saving money is a virtue? Maybe, yeah, probably. If you ask it a different way, yeah. Okay. So do you think spending less is a virtue?

Yeah. You're walking me down this path. Is there ever a time? Yes. That is what I do. Yes. That's true. Do you have any parts of life where you love to spend money? I won't speak for you, but with friends, family, like kind of hosting parties, things like that. He loves technology. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Like what, iPhones and stuff? No, no, I don't even have an iPhone now. Oh, you have a car. What do you have for a car? Tesla. Okay. Yeah. How come you bought that? I mean, you could get a cheaper car. We'll be right back.

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The money kind of made sense with like gas savings, the additional, you know, additional payments. It wasn't an outrageous amount of additional money. And it was, it was something that I valued. What was that? You value it? Something I valued. Yeah. Having a nicer, nicer vehicle. Did you ask Noor about it before you bought it?

We talked about it. I was so happy. I was like, please. Damn. I wish you said like, I said no. And then he did it anyway. I would have been like, no. He was like, please do something for yourself. Okay. Because I'm guessing you don't spend basically anything on yourself. No, not much. You're like, I'm a simple guy. I don't need much. Yeah. Right. Yeah. In general.

But I mean, like I, like I mentioned, you know, I do enjoy hosting, having parties, whether they're at our house or events, like, you know, just kind of going above and beyond with parties. What do you, what does that mean? Go above and beyond? Like we had our daughter's first birthday party a couple of weeks ago and we had like 50 people, 60 people to like an ice cream shop. Wow. Catered, catered, catered lunch, bought ice creams for everybody. That's cool. Yeah. All right. And you felt comfortable spending on that? Yeah. No questions? No questions. Yeah.

That was pretty interesting. People who struggle to spend money on themselves tend to have at least one area where they are happy to spend money. And usually for parents, it's their kids. I do notice how when Gibran described his Tesla, he led with all the ways that it saved him money. How it was such a good value.

Listen, value is a money lens or way of looking at the world and it's a fine money lens. But there are also other money lenses too. And my wish for you is that you have multiple money lenses at your disposal, which you can pick and choose from for different situations in your life. Money lenses include cost, luxury, convenience, results, desire, delight, and so many others.

You have this business. Is that your full-time? No, that's a side business. The business that you own with your parents is a side business? Yeah. And you have a full-time job? Full-time job. Okay, got it. What about you, Noor? I have a full-time job and I'm in the process of starting a food product. Okay, on the side. And is that a passion project? Is it because you want additional income? What is it? Both. Okay. What are you going to do with the extra money?

Um, I've made $30. Love it. All right. That's the best $30 you ever made. The first, the first 30. That is cool. Yeah. Okay. Um, and what would you do if you made 30,000?

So my money dials, like something that's really important to me is giving back. I really feel for child care workers like they're so underpaid. They give so much. They love our children like they're our own. So like for our children's birthdays or holidays, we always give extra money, like one hundred dollars to each teacher and things like that. So I think that's one of my money dials. We always donate. We always pick a cause that we each care about. We donate. We get it matched.

So I'd say that's one of my money dials and probably travel and family. Any issue with Gibran when you want to donate money? He grumbles about it, but I don't, I just do it anyways. I don't do it anyways for like the DoorDash, but I'll do it anyways for giving. Because I think it's just such a high value for me. I mean, I think it goes back to what we talked about

Half an hour ago about just kind of like rooted in like saving and, you know, you know, I didn't go on a ton of vacations and stuff when I was a kid or spend money, give like, you don't have enough money for yourself. You don't give a ton. Yeah. Really was like giving volunteering of time and efforts as an example. But you have a million dollars now and you're in your thirties. Yeah. It's.

It's hard. It's hard, right? I mean, that's kind of what's difficult about money. It's ingrained in you. Can it change? It can, I think. I mean, that's kind of why she reached out to you and we're here doing this in front of people because it's difficult. It's difficult. Yeah. What do you think your children, three and one, one is young, but three, okay, is still early. But what do you think they will pick up about money in about two years? Yeah.

I think they'll be conflicted because we're so different. For example, like,

His parents, they're so wonderful, but they center so much around money. We did an Easter egg hunt last year and they just put money in the eggs. I'm like, no, just put stickers or something. Instead of candy, they put some candy. How much money though? That's what we all know. No, like a quarter. No, they put dollars in multiple eggs. And I was like, please, I don't want it to be so money centered. Okay. I wonder if they will also observe that mom is the one who brings up things to spend on and dad is the one who says no.

Probably. What do you think your son will take away from that? What will his role be? They know. Yeah. The son will observe that his dad is the one who says no, implying he's the one who has the right to say no. And therefore he will say no. And as he gets older, he will probably observe that. Like, why does dad always say no? Like, it's fun to go to these places. Why does dad say no? And Jabron, why does dad say no?

Sometimes for no good reason, to be honest, right? It's a quick reaction sometimes. That's right. There was a reason your parents said no because they didn't have the money. But in this case...

at some point they will realize you do have money, right? From whatever thing they absorb. And so they will be living the story of their grandparents in circumstances that simply do not match up at all. Okay. Actually, you asked about money phrases. Something my parents always told me was,

which means the more you give, the more you get. And I think I live that way and where that virtue comes from. So they will probably pick up on that as well. I agree. They'll probably be pretty generous. She will probably be pretty generous. She'll notice when you give to people around you, teachers, vendors. Great. Might she also learn that you have to ask your husband? Probably. What do you think about that? Made me sad when you said that.

So yeah, not good. What would be a lesson you would want to teach her? To make decisions based on her own values. So that might be, we really, the reason that we have these monthly parties with our friends is that, finish the sentence for me.

We value community and we value caring for our community. And this is one of the ways that we do it. Nurturing relationships with our friends, family. And tie that to money. Be more specific. We get catering. See this food here? It looks really good. We get this food made for everybody because we want everybody to be able to eat

And we can spend a little bit of money on it because this is important to us and we save money on our subscriptions. Simple things that kids can understand. Repeat those things enough and they'll get it. I feel like we always try to spend as little as possible. It's like either of you a musician. Okay. Any musicians in the room?

All right. It's like being able to play one note and one note only. Less. That's the note that so many of us were raised. Just spend less. And if you have to, like your parents, like my parents, that is the only note available. But what a tragedy to have access to every note and to still only play one. Now I can teach you all these magical phrases, but...

That's all icing on the cake until you truly get it here. So I want to share my observations from having spoken to you. I think that both of you are living a story that your parents taught you. It's actually a very empowering story in many ways. The story is work hard, be generous, and good things will happen. Well, guess what? They did happen.

You have two kids. You have a loving relationship. You have a million dollars and very high income in a very inexpensive area. But I don't think your parents ever taught you what happens next. Did they? No. My parents never turned that corner. So they never taught that. Right. So they said, save, save, save. Work, work, work. Dot, dot, dot. But what's after that? Yeah. Do you know?

We're, I mean, we're, we're, we're figuring it out now. And that's kind of what we've talked about the whole change and Evan flow of, of life of, you know,

doing those vacations you know you know not just giving volunteering of time but also monetarily giving um you know paying for you know other services that we i've never dreamed of paying for right growing up like what lawnmower cleaners somebody yeah somebody mowing just as an example again it's your money i'll never tell you what to do with your money but i

If I had a million dollar net worth, if I had cash flow like the two of you do, there's so many things I would think about doing differently. Just one of them is to take the things that are important to me and do them more frequently. So as an example, instead of a cleaner, it could be once a month, it could be once a week. With two children, certainly there's things to do. Mm-hmm.

For parties, which you mentioned you love, the question I would just sit down and ask you is like, what would make this magical? I'll give you one idea, then you give me one. Magical would be have somebody clean before and then have somebody clean the next day. So you two, the party ends, you two go to sleep. And then they come the next morning and boom, it's all, that would be magical, don't you think? Yeah. What would make it magical for you? The thing that you love already, make it even more.

Well, for a Diwali party, we had a henna artist come and that was magical. So like things like that. Love it. Keep going. Maybe a pianist. Whoa. Okay. That's cool. Love that. Let's switch to travel, which you mentioned is important to you. Give me an example, DeBron, of what would make travel magical. Yeah. So we're talking about this for our upcoming travel and the magical one I'll steal from you is having a babysitter.

While we're out with the two kids somewhere, have a babysitter come over so we can have free time, you know, in the evening or even during the day. While you're traveling? Yeah, while we're traveling. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Okay. That's kind of what we're talking about and thinking about for these. Any parents in the room think that would be magical when you're traveling? Yeah. Yeah. I like that. You got anything else?

Well, he stole mine. That's okay. The good thing about a rich life is there's an unlimited number of things you can do. In fact, I calculated some numbers just from looking at your CSP. And if you continue on the path you are currently on, no changes, no raises, the same income,

in your early 30s for the rest of your entire life, by the time you are 65, you will have $9.2 million. What do you think about that? Noor looks happy. Jabron looks worried. He's like, it's not going to be enough. $9.2 million means that you could conservatively pull $370,000 a year out. Okay? Forever. Mm-hmm.

That's a lot of money, right? That's a lot of money. That means you are a $9.2 million couple. You just need time. I want to know from the audience, what would you do if you were going to have $9 million? I would live around the world a month at a time, like a month in Paris, a month in Malaysia, a month in Australia, and stay in the best Airbnb in the best location. Okay.

I would definitely take my friends with me everywhere I went because that's like my biggest thing is to do things with people. So like three or four trips a year, all my friends. I would retire my parents. So I would not worry about the DoorDash anymore. Amazing.

What about you? You wake up tomorrow, you're worth $9 million. What's on the agenda? Let me know in the comments. And remember, whether it's 9 million, 1 million, whatever the number is, I want you to use this question and adapt it to get really intentional about what your vision is. The point is so that you can live a rich life today and a richer life tomorrow.

The traveling one is very intriguing. Living in different places and nice places, experiencing the world. Yeah, that would be really nice. And we both work remote. We could do it. You got to wait till you have $9 million? Oh, that's true. No, do you? I'm asking. Like, do you have to wait to have $9 million to travel more? No. Okay. How much? I don't know. We probably have enough now. Yeah. Probably. Probably.

So many of us, we obsess about the skill of saving, which I think the two of you do. I'm not saying we're necessarily good at it, but we obsess about it. Some people like fire nerds obsess about managing money, investing in the fire communities case, or you hear lots of folks who they have like 10 apps they look at every day, they log in, they check it. You know, are we spending too much at Target? That kind of thing.

But I find very few people think meaningfully about the skill of spending money. And if you are on track conservatively to have $9 million, then that has to be one of the most, if not the most important skill that you work on, right? Because you already won the game of saving. The number I just shared with you is if you just keep doing what you're doing, you don't even need the side income. You don't need a raise. You don't need any of it.

And those things are surely to come, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I love the confidence in what you just said. I don't hear the same confidence in the spending. Yeah. No, I mean, it's a good point, right? I mean, since...

Nora was introduced to your content, the teach you to be rich, you know, what's, what is your rich life? And that's, that's kind of why I agreed to come here with her to, to this is, you know, she's asking that question is like, how would we want to live differently here now? And so. You want to do it right now? Should we just map it out?

Yeah. All right. I don't have anything else to do. Okay. We're all here. Let's do it. All right. Let's do it. I don't like, I don't like giving people too much homework when they can just do it right in front of our face and then walk out. Yeah. Having accomplished something.

I'm going to show them how to design a vivid, specific vision of a rich life. Now, keep in mind, the amount of money is not the point. They're going to be multimillionaires, so of course I'm going to tailor this for their situation. But if you have less, just adjust. Adapt the principle to your own situation. What you're going to hear me incorporate are the things they love, and I'm going to push them to make it magical, memorable, and incredibly specific.

I think it's kind of cool because when I asked you what lights you up, what do you like to spend money on? I did see big smiles on your faces. And I can tell you do have these values. The Tesla was actually very revelatory, very interesting. I love that you have that thing. The friends and family, the donations, amazing. And the travel. I think all those could be

You could spend more attention and time and you could use money to make them more meaningful. So you tell me, what could you do this year if you wanted to improve your skills at spending money meaningfully? Gibran. Well, I agree with you about that.

Making those changes to make peak experiences. Right. And so we were going to Spain at the end of the month. Okay, great. We've, we've extended our stay, uh, book, you know, uh, we're at a resort for a week. We're in Barcelona for a week, you know, booked, uh, an entire apartment there. Okay. So we're trying to, trying to turn up the notch. Make it magical. Think about what Noor loves. What does she love? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think instead of booking this babysitter for a day or two days, why not an extended time?

Shopping. Maybe finding a concert or something while we're there in Barcelona. I like it. Things like that. Let's just go with the shopping thing because she just told us. Sometimes people just tell us what they love. Let's go with it. She goes, I love shopping. Yeah. Right? Now again, I'm not telling you you have to spend X dollars. I will never do that. But let's assume for the moment, play with the example. She wants to go shopping. What else could you do?

not only look up a place but maybe pre-purchase an item or something so she could arrive and you know there could already be a

look at newer's face by the way like the biggest smile i've ever seen in my life like pre-purchase like a pair of heels or something okay yeah or a dress i like that so you're sending over her preferences ahead of time they have everything pulled for her amazing or you find a local stylist and she goes out for a day amazing cool what else definitely time without the kids okay so babysitter how many days let's just be specific

We actually talked about like baby every night. Whoa. That we're not at the resort because we wouldn't have the connection. So like six nights. Okay. You know, the resort concierge can also find babysitters. Babysitters. That's a good idea. I would love to not cook at the

Like not, we're not doing that. No. Okay. You're not going to cook. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like we have an apartments. We talked about like groceries and cooking, but like, it'd be nice to just like eat out every meal. So for me, if I were the two of you, I would sit down and I would have that most amazing conversation in my life. It would be what is going to make this trip the most memorable one we've ever taken.

So what would it be? It would be, what do you love to do? I want to shop. I want to have time without the kids. I want to take the kids to this amazing thing. I want us, I want you to plan one thing. I want to plan another thing. And then you put it all out there. You don't have to do all of it. You just put it out there. You start to get excited. You're pulling pictures. You're bringing things you found in travel magazines.

And then you map it out, but you leave lots of leisure time. You go, let's do one big thing per day. And then you start to ask yourself, what can we use money for to make this easy? Well, we don't know what neighborhoods. Let's get a travel advisor who can help us do these bookings and X, Y, Z. And suddenly you end up, I don't know how much this trip is planned to cost. Do you know? Probably in that like five, seven, somewhere in that range. Let's just say 5K for easy math. And you go-

Looking at our CSP, do we have the ability to spend 15? I'm making it up. Of course you do. Would an extra $10,000 mean any difference in the course of your life, which is going to have tens of millions of dollars? No. But what if that $10,000 could be incredibly meaningful for you and for your kids, right? The way that I would apply this beyond this trip is to sit back. You can use my journal. You can do it on your own. What is our rich life?

You shouldn't be debating over DoorDash like ever again. At this income, that shouldn't be a conversation you have. It should actually be something that the two of you plan. You go, how many times a week do we want to eat out? What nights? And let's leave one free floating night because sometimes we're tired. Set the rule.

Make it part of your CSP and then don't think about it again. But I think you've earned the right to focus less on costs and to focus more on making meaning with your money.

Yeah, I would love to make that mental shift. Okay. Jabron? Yeah, agreed. I think that's what we talk about is like, how do you turn that corner? What's next, right? You know, you kind of reach that pinnacle of savings, investing, earnings. What's the answer? We're trying to figure it out. No, the answer is right in front of you. Spending, right? Spending on the things that we care about and the things that we enjoy to make our lives, you know, better.

Yeah. The answer is if you want to spend more meaningfully, you spend more meaningfully. That is my wish for you, that you don't just play one note, that you play lots of notes and you play them very passionately. Okay? All right. Thank you, Noor. Thank you, Gibran. Let's give him a round of applause. All right, guys. Thank you very much.

I really like Noor and Gibran. You can tell that there's a lot of love here and it took a lot of courage to talk about money and their relationship in front of an audience in Philadelphia of hundreds of people.

What really stood out to me is that they are living old stories. One old story is the one from Gibran's childhood where saving money was the primary thing to focus on. But there's another story of how the two of them relate. Like Noor asking for something, then Gibran saying, okay, and then Noor saying, wait a second, I'm not sure I really want that.

They both have an amazing opportunity to change the trajectory of their lives and their kids' lives. But it takes turning the page on these old stories and moving into the new chapter of their life. They have money. Accept it. Appreciate it. Be grateful. Be generous. And also have some fun. You worked hard for it. After I spoke to them, I asked the audience for their reactions.

I'm actually curious to hear from you about what is one thing you can take away from Noor and Gibran for your own relationship or your own personal spending. The main thing I'm taking away from my experience here is living my rich life, but also including that more with my partner.

So for me, the main takeaway that I would like to take from, you know, what we experienced with him on stage would be, you know, having a clear understanding as to what I want to do with the retirement savings. Like, what am I actually trying to fulfill with that is one thing that I want to have a clearer picture on. I wrote it down verbatim. It was when you said, we don't think meaningfully about the skill of spending money.

Because I'm so focused on saving all the time, I never think, you're right. How do I meaningfully actually apply it in ways that are significant? I have a 15-year-old son. My biggest takeaway is how he is truly seeing us as a unity when it comes to finance and not have him pick and choose who he wants to be like.

The main thing that I am taking away from this experience is to make more of what I'm already doing more magical. That really resonated for us in something as simple as checking a bag on an airplane. I don't know how many times I've thought, it's got to be a carry-on. I don't want to pay for the check bag. And it's 60 freaking bucks. We can afford the bag. So goodbye, carry-on bags. Round of applause. All right.

I really enjoyed this conversation and I especially enjoyed doing it live. I've got a lot more events coming up. Stay tuned for the announcements to get tickets.

Working with Ramit was great. It felt like he just really got to the root of things really quickly and really opened my mind about the way I think about things, how I'm perpetuating money psychology that I didn't even know I was perpetuating and what that impact could be on my kids and our life today. It was smooth, great, and insightful. He talked...

lot about what we're doing why we're doing it psychology and it really drove home those points you know that we kind of know but you know he really helped peel back the layers of the onion and allow us to think differently about money

The experience was better than what I expected. It felt so natural. I really appreciated how deep he went. It felt very conversational. At times I forgot that there was an audience. And I also felt like he was just rooting for us and wasn't judging us. ♪

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.