47. “We make $500k. Why are we carrying a balance on our credit cards?”
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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. You know, money doesn't have to be boring. I get a lot of questions of people who have set up their accounts who have money being saved and they're like,

What now? What's next? How am I supposed to design my rich life? That is why I created the journal. The journal is something you can do either on your own or with a partner. Imagine yourself 15 minutes in the morning. You have a

cup of steaming tea, and you're sitting down following the prompts that help you envision what your rich life is. What's your perfect week? What's your perfect month, year? This journal is designed as a no numbers journal. It's not technical, but it's going to help you understand what you truly value and also what you don't care about.

I recommend you pick up a copy of this journal. You can do it solo or with a partner, and it will help you design your rich life. Get it at any bookstore now. He will say, well, why do you need someone to take care of you? You have your own money. Are you trying to get someone to take care of you? Is that what you're doing? I don't know about this money. I've always been so confused as to like, you make so much money and we have...

We have no money. We both want to fix this. I love her, you know. I want us to be married. This is kind of the biggest catalyst to our relationship that we are now pulling apart that we need to fix. We either need to fix this or it's not going to continue. There's no sense in

arguing every day, day in, this is mine, you owe me $2, you know, this, oh, I didn't tell you about this or nothing is transparent. Oh, I won't share my credit card expenses with you. I just, I'm not okay with continuing on.

Today, I'm speaking with Ashley and Charles, and what a fascinating story they have. They're in their early 40s, they've been married for six years, and they have five children from previous relationships. Now, Ashley's going to tell you a story about how she went to the grocery store, and she couldn't use her account because there was no money there. But together, they earn over half a million dollars a year. Ashley just can't figure out where the money is going.

Have you ever felt like your partner was hiding something from you? Something big? Well, what if you discover that there are lies in your relationship about money? What if you find out that your money is so confusing to the two of you that you just have no idea what's going on?

Well, as I probe into their finances today, I find that their income is hard to understand because it's erratic and it involves investments and stock options and all kinds of confusing things. And as I mentioned, there are also lies about money. What I'm going to do today is try to help them simplify their money in the hopes that they can build trust together. And at the end of the episode, you're going to hear a follow-up from this couple.

After I help them organize their conscious spending plan, you're gonna hear what that was like for them. To download your own copy of the conscious spending plan, you can visit iwt.com slash episode 47. That's iwt.com slash episode 47. All right, let's get started. I'm Ramit Sethi, and this is I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

I feel like ever since we've gotten married, we haven't been on the same page with finances and it's just gotten worse recently. I feel like we're more disconnected and everything is mine and yours now and we don't have a plan. About a month ago or two months ago, Charles gets a KSO, which is like a commission check. He gets it every three months and since we've been

Disconnecting recently with our joint accounts, he had told me that he didn't receive the KSO checks anymore and that I didn't understand and that it was built into his salary. And the reality was, is that he did receive it and it went into his own personal account.

And he didn't tell me about it until, I don't know, a couple weeks later. He told me the truth. How'd you find out?

I just knew there was some... My intuition that he had received it and he wasn't being honest. So I asked actually to look at his personal account and he never shows me his personal account. And he did this one time and it was... The deposit was in there. So that's where I saw it. And when you brought that up to him, what did he say? He said that he needed it to pay his credit cards, the $8,000. So...

That was his reasoning for taking it. I've never... With the amount of money, his salary that he makes, it doesn't really add up to me. So what he's putting into the joint, it's... I don't know if he's putting...

He says he's putting $1,800 into his own personal account, but it could be more. I don't know. My credit card bills had gotten beefy because we went on a family trip. So I'd put all the airplane tickets on my credit card. And then also I was putting... I was reserving the hotels because I tend to be the planner when we're traveling. So my credit cards have gotten really big. So I was okay with that because I knew the commission check was coming. And so I thought that we could...

when the commission check came. And so that's what stressed me out was that I couldn't pay my credit cards because there was no money. Charles, tell me your perspective. What happened with the commission check? Why'd you hide it? Because Ashley and I were in a fight

And we've been disagreeing on monies. And I've been accumulating a lot of this debt on my credit card that I wanted to get away from. That started to accumulate, that started to stress me out. And I wanted to pay for it, but she didn't think so because she wanted to pay for other expenses that she wanted to take on. I take the burden of the majority of their expenses on a day-to-day basis.

I take on a lot of, say, the, what is it, our Comcast bill. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on. How much money do you make, Charles? About $400,000. Why are we talking about your Comcast bill?

Because you're asking about all these expenses because they're going all my way. Comcast is a hundred bucks a month. Why are we talking about that? That's not why you're in the red. It's 250. Yeah. Okay. 250. The two of you make $534,000. And the first expenses you're telling me about are your Comcast bill and cell phone bill. Do you already see the problem? This is just absurd. And it's a great example of how people cause themselves to get stuck with their money.

If you make $500,000 a year and your first response about expenses is to start talking about your Comcast bill, you have a serious problem. From the look on Charles' face, I'm guessing he's never actually been called out for his money attitude, except obviously by his wife. You'll notice this pattern of thinking small happens again and again. Last week, I helped Gavin and Carolyn stop talking about password managers and start thinking about their rich life.

Today, I'm telling Charles that he's not running out of money because of his Comcast bill. Guys, the key lesson here is to focus on the big wins. You're not in financial trouble because of your lattes, no matter who told you that. You're in trouble because of your housing costs or car costs, debt, including student loans and credit cards and sometimes healthcare. It's the big things that trap you, but it's also the big things that can set you free.

If you focus on those five big wins in life, you don't ever have to worry about the price of coffee or your Comcast bill. Charles sees money as his and mine, and I see money as ours. Like when we got married, we didn't talk about things. You know, he has a lot of property and everything.

I just, just, and I may get an inheritance. So I just assume we just put it all together and, uh, share it all because this is what my parents did. So that's kind of my role models. Uh, he did not want to do that and, and put things in trust behind my back. And, um, we just never had a discussion about it. And now I'm in the picture and I feel like,

I'm a burden. Like he doesn't want to take care of me. And I'll say that. And, and he will say, well, why do you, why do you need someone to take care of you? Like, are you trying to get someone to take care of you? Is that what you're doing? And that's, yeah. When you're in a marriage, it's, I take care of you. You take care of me and we work this out together. And I have come to terms with

the premarital things. We both consciously came in guarded to try and build something together. But by building, we became more enemies than allies. And

And now that we're here, we're still arguing. I think we're still in the mindset of our past relationships where we felt we were beat down by our other partners. So I've been carrying all the debt in the family for a long period of time, which I'm okay with. We had some credit card debt that was piling up.

We got into a fight again, and I felt like I had the burden of all this debt under my name, and she didn't want to relieve me of any of that debt. So I said, why don't you transfer the Audi into your name? She said no. So I had a little bit of resentment.

And now that we're talking through this, I'm okay with carrying this. As long as we're focused on paying all this jointly, I'm okay with it. That's the way to go. And before I was just resentful of the arguments and the, you know, the trust of, hey, we're going to pay this off together and we're going to agree to do this. Okay. Because you kept saying that's your car. That's your car. That's not my car. That's your car.

And I feel like it's our car. Both cars are our car. If we were in a divorce, that's what the judge would say. Both cars are our cars. We're both responsible for the debt and we're both responsible for the other one that we sell. It's just, it's us together. It's ours. It's not yours. It's not mine. Did you hear what I just said? Yeah, that you're okay with it now, but I'm struggling. Help me understand why you're struggling when I just agreed to do this together. Yeah.

I've just been hearing this for so many years that I want it. I want it to happen. I'm telling you I want the change and I want this to change. I do too. That's why I'm here. It's going to be tough to move forward if you're both constantly living in the past. Yeah. I don't know if they really want to change. I don't know if it's too late, but I do know that they've never really talked about money in an honest way. I can tell that from just a few minutes of talking to them.

Whenever I ask people if they want to change, they almost always say yes. That's because it's easy to say yes. It's easy to claim you want to change. But when people see what it actually takes, many of those same people vanish. I don't mind if someone looks at what it'll take and they consciously say, hey, I'm not going to do that. It's not worth it for me. But that almost never happens. It's much more common that someone will tell me they want to change with their money,

And then they'll simply not do it. They'll do one rich life review, then they'll stop. Or they'll try talking about money and it will end up in a fight again. And they'll say, see, I knew it would never work. If you want to change something big, like your money, your body, your psychology, yeah, it's hard. The first time you try, you will fail.

We have to expect that we will fail. It took a lifetime to get to where you are. It will probably take years, if not the rest of your life, to truly change. I'm over people saying two-minute abs. That's not how it works. Two minutes to financial freedom. It's bullshit. It will probably take you a lifetime to truly change.

But what I try to do on these calls is to find out if they're honest about actually wanting to change. I don't think most people even know themselves. In Ashley and Charles' case, to help them change, one thing I need to do is help them stop living in the past. I need to get them to focus on where they are today and where they want to go. So to do that, I asked them to fill out a conscious spending plan before getting on this call with me.

We're going to go through it together. By the way, to get your own copy of The Conscious Spending Plan, go to iwt.com slash episode 47. Now listen to them describe how it felt to fill out the plan together.

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.

and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They'll even deal with customer service for you. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash Ramit. Give it a shot at rocketmoney.com slash Ramit. That's rocketmoney.com slash Ramit.

My team and I create tons of material every single day. Scripts, voiceovers, emails, all kinds of material that we need to be good and we need it to happen fast. And one of the things we use is Grammarly, especially their new AI tool. For example, every Saturday, we send out my podcast newsletter. I break down an anonymous person's conscious spending plan. And I like going really deep to break down the numbers and show you things you might have missed in your own finances.

Well, guess what? That is a lot of copy. Before, it would take my team a ton of time to work through everything I had written and edit it and make it right for email. Now, Grammarly does it for us in seconds. Grammarly Premium actually gives us suggestions on how to make our writing more impactful for you. It identifies gaps in the writing and shows personalized suggestions to improve the whole thing. And it can even add images like that.

So,

Let's look at the numbers here. I had you go through a conscious spending plan before we got on this call. Yeah. Now, what was it like to do this conscious spending plan together? Well, I have spreadsheets and a budget, but she just kept saying, no, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I said, okay, let's... It was a little uneasy during that exercise. It was completely frustrating, right?

Yeah. It was very challenging because I don't know what's going on. I have spreadsheets. I don't know what's real, what's not real. I've never seen accounts. Okay. So here I see gross monthly income of $35,000, which adds up to $420,000. Isn't that missing almost $100,000? Yeah.

We, this was rough numbers for me. We did not. It's pretty rough. It's so rough that it's missing over $100,000. This is just the...

I don't know. We just came up, we, again, because nobody knows what's going on except for maybe Charles knows his number. No, no, no. Well, let's just do it right now. See, this is one of the things that couples often use to stay stuck. Well, we got the money coming in here and the RSUs and the KSOs and blah, blah, blah. Why don't we just start by putting it all out on the table? Then we can start chopping up things and moving them over here and there. Let's just put it all out on the table. What is your gross monthly income?

No, your podcast player is not malfunctioning. That silence is that they simply don't know the answer to the most basic of questions. How much do you make? They really don't know. What an effective shield that must be to avoid ever having to talk about money. They make over $500,000 a year and they're off by over $100,000.

Now, part of that confusion comes from all the different ways they make money. Charles has a KSO, basically a bonus. He also has RSUs or restricted stock units, which are company shares that vest over time. Just for fun, let's listen to that deafening silence when I ask them how much they make again. What is your gross monthly income? Well, let's see. Okay, so we're missing some. I'm bringing mine up just to make sure that I'm giving you the exact number.

Let me go to my, so I'll look at my last paycheck and. I'm going to skip ahead here, not to end your suffering, but to end mine. I spent so long working through basic numbers with them. Let me just skip to it and notice how confused they are about their own numbers and how confusing this must be to their partner. I can give you my net paycheck, $9,930, but I get paid 10 months out of the year.

Ashley, what do you do to get paid only 10 months a year? I'm a school nurse. Charles, what do you got? Take home 43.93 times two. That's take home. Take home is 87.86. Yeah. And then every quarter I get a KSL. It's very, very sometime time based on it. So I would say 5,900. 5,900 per quarter is 23,600 in addition. That's correct. Okay, fine.

And is there some RSU you want to put in here too? $30,000 per year. So $400,196. Does that sound right? Yeah. Perfect. So what's the take home on that? Gosh. Eliminate the RSUs because I don't pull anything out of there. I just want to know the take home. Just tell me the number. $25,636 to date. $25,636 net per month.

That's about right. Yeah. Do you guys see how already there's so much that you two have not talked about? Like you're giving me these numbers. So one of them's in 10 months, one of them's in a year, one of them's by month. It's very confusing. That's the whole point of the conscious spending plan is you put it in the same format. So you're all working from literally the same page. Let me recap.

Ashley's gross monthly income is $11,189. Charles's gross monthly income is $33,349. $27,000 of that is cash and the remaining $5,000 to $6,000 is stock.

At this point, I don't know. Maybe I have all these numbers wrong. I don't know what the hell's going on anymore. I've been listening to them talk about decimal places and quarterly bonuses for so long. I have no idea anymore. Basically, they make a shitload of money. That's all you need to know. Now, most households won't have such a complex financial picture, but this is a great example of how couples let complications stop them from getting on the same page.

Listen, I don't know shit about measuring a house, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you can't measure half of your house in inches and then the other half in centimeters. You can't compare annual incomes versus income from 10 months versus income from quarterly bonuses. You need to standardize everything. You can use my conscious spending plan on the podcast page, IWT.com slash episode 47 to do this.

And now I want to highlight something interesting for you. A lot of you think if you just had transparency in your relationship, suddenly you'd feel better. Transparency, that's all I need. Transparency. Transparency is highly overrated. Yes, transparency is good. It's table stakes in a relationship. But a lot of you think it's going to magically solve your problems. Really?

Well, here we have a beautiful case study. Ashley just learned about $10,000 a month coming in that she didn't know about. So do you think it actually changed the way she feels about money now that it's more transparent? Let's find out. I'd like to just show you something. So currently, you wrote that your gross monthly income is $35,000. In reality, it's $44,511.

Wow. Why is our bank account always empty? Because I don't see that money going to our joint account. I don't know where the money is going. I don't know why $13,000 goes out the window one month for all of his credit cards. I don't know why. That seemed curious, Charles. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I spent money on furniture, on tires, on getting cars. Can you show the KSOs what you get for a KSO?

But that's what some of these are here. So I'll show you this other one. So you got $13,000. And a KSL. Zeroes take on. See that? So you got a $13,000 KSL check on April 26th? That goes into the E-Trade account.

Okay. So why, what E-Trade account are you referring to? And why isn't it going to ask? Because I feel like we're drowning. This is cash in the E-Trade account. Why are you putting cash in an E-Trade account? It's not cash. Actually, it's not cash. It's stock. Charles, what is she really asking? She thinks I'm taking this money and putting it somewhere else and hiding it. Are you? No.

It's in the E-Trader account. I don't know about this money. I've always been so confused as to like you make so much money and we have...

we have no money. Like we have to take money from our brokerage account sometimes because we don't have any money in our joint account. Charles, you got to stop looking at the screen, man. Your screen is not going to help you on this one. Nope. Nope. Nope. Cause I want to show you where the money is. Charles, what, before we get into, you're showing your PNLs and this is a handmade document in Google docs, a financial statement. What do you think that Ashley's reaction is going to be to this? Uh,

I don't know. I know. I could tell. I never even met her. I know looking at her face. Okay. What do you think it's going to be? I don't know. Can you guess? You've been married five years. Do you think that this is going to actually address what she really wants to know? This is getting frustrating. Charles is so focused on his spreadsheets and his weird PNLs that he won't even look up at me. And he can't even bring himself to guess what his wife is really looking for.

He keeps getting drawn into the weeds, not realizing that the weeds are the problem. When I press him, suddenly they both start to tell me the truth, the actual truth. 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.

I wish I had done it years earlier. If you feel stuck in your career and you also wish you had a group of peers who could help you get unstuck,

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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. Do you think that this is going to actually address what she really wants to know? I don't know. Actually, what are you thinking? That's a good question, Charles. Keep going.

Yeah, I want to know what you're thinking because I want to show you where that money is going, that I'm not taking it anywhere. But we have a brokerage account together, a joint account, and it's been sitting there doing nothing. That money, you're watching it grow. I don't see it grow. I had no idea you were putting that money into an E-Trade account.

And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't set up that account. That's a company account that was set up by my company. Can I, can I just make an observation here? Just kind of point out what I'm seeing. Ashley is frustrated because you both make $530,000 plus, but you're in the red. You're having to draw from here and there, you know, there's no communication.

And she feels like there's money that's being hidden. And she does have a reason to feel that way. She did discover that you were putting money and secretly paying off credit card debt. Charles, you're saying, well, I have this money, but it's actually an RSU and it's actually not me creating the account. It's employer created. And I would rather see that money grow than take it out and pay taxes on it. Am I fairly representing both of your positions here?

Yes. Okay. Well, do you see how fucking crazy this is? What the hell is wrong with you two? Oh, Rami. I feel like he wants to do his own deal and he looks at it as his own money. And I'm sitting over here drowning, begging like, oh, we don't have any money to go to the grocery store. Charles, she makes a pretty valid point. She can't afford groceries.

And you got this $13,000 every quarter or whatever it is being squirreled away in some account that she doesn't even know about. It kind of feels a little unfair, wouldn't you say? Yeah. She doesn't have money to pay for apples. So what does all this compounding matter if your relationship breaks apart because you can't afford 20 bucks at the grocery store? It doesn't make sense to me. What's really going on, Charles? Why do you have all this money stuff

going here and there. And I don't understand it. Tell me, I want to know your position. I want to retire early and I want to save as much as money as possible to be able to retire in seven years. You know, my, my earning years are probably at the peak right now. Uh, and I want to take advantage of that as much as possible and save as much money as possible. Got it. So you want to sprint as fast as you can.

And I'm going to guess that you want to minimize your expenses for the next seven years. Am I reading that right? Yes. Okay. And so when you have to pay for skis or Comcast or whatever, how does that feel to you? A little bit of a burden, but a necessity. You feel resentful? A little bit. Yeah. Ashley, did you know any of this?

No, because I'll tell you why. He goes on extravagant trips with his friends. He goes to Vail and skis and spends a boatload of money. He's went on a ton of ski trips this winter. So I don't see him living the life of scrimping and investing. You started using my...

recommended system, a joint account, and two separate individual accounts with guilt-free spending. I was happy to hear that, but it seems that you're not doing that anymore. What happened? Charles has decided that he doesn't want to put money in the joint account anymore. Because what, Charles? Whenever anyone deviates from my plan, I always get to ask the question, why? Why?

Tell me why. Okay. We got into a big fight about a year or so ago. I don't know how long it was. And out of that joint account, she liquidated all the accounts. What? So when she did that, it scared me to bejesus. Like, oh, wow. All that money is gone now. And I felt very unsafe.

And, you know, and her doing that. Why did you think she did that? That if we got a divorce or got separated, she would take the money and kind of support herself and her kids. Ashley? Back up just a little bit. When we met, we had no money. We had no savings. We had nothing. And we built up a little bit of money, like $3,000. We got in a big fight and I told him to leave.

And I did as a knee jerk reaction because I'd just gotten out of my divorce where I got financially very screwed big time. I ended up with a lot of debt. And so I got scared and a knee jerk reaction. I took the $3,000 and put it in my account for about five hours, six hours.

And then I put it back because we had a discussion. I knew it was wrong. And that was not a year ago. That was five years ago when we first moved into the house that we're living in now. So that's what happened. Okay. So you both have things you've done in the past that have made your partner not trust you.

Yes. But that was a long time ago. And I feel like I've proven to him, I don't even think we had that joint account. We've had a joint account. I've proven to him over and over and over again. I've never taken any money. I've never done anything like that since for five years. Do you both want to create a joint account? I do. Charles? Yeah, sure. I mean... Okay. So what's stopping the both of you from doing it? You know how.

Well, we have a joint account. Okay. Why'd you stop? Because all this arguing that we kept arguing back and forth. It started with him taking that money. That's when he decided I feel, I feel a little controlled. I feel like it's a control piece. Yeah.

I want everything to be open and honest and transparent, Remy. But I want validation because so much money has been, I feel, hidden. I want validation to see that that is that right amount. I mean, the fact is you two didn't even know how much you made. You were off by over $100,000. So there's a variety of reasons why you're not transparent. Some of that is just pure competence. You two don't know how to calculate your numbers. And some of it is

history, deception, and other reasons. Now, transparency will be on the table. That's a given. He doesn't want to. He'll do it. Charles, would you be open to being transparent? Yes. Done. I will make sure that it's transparent. For all the money you make, over half a million dollars, you don't even know how much you make. You don't know how much you spend. You come in here talking about Comcast, which is the least of your problems.

And you have all this complexity of quarterly payments and 401ks and all this stuff being taken out. Think of what a sixth grader would understand when it comes to money. I'm talking one page. That's the level of simplicity the two of you need to start. How much do we have? The numbers are quite large. You have $694,000 of investments.

Your savings, $20,000. That's way too low, but okay. At least it's got a few zeros in it. You have debt of $135,000. Don't worry, we're going to talk about that. The point is you have some of these basic numbers out here. I'd like for you to put them together using the conscious spending plan.

single page, and then you two can agree. Hey, Oh, I didn't know we have 135,000. I thought it was less. Can we, can we double click on that? Can we learn a little bit more? Let's make sure we both understand it correctly. One of the reasons that there's conflict is that you two don't know what you actually have. I think that that comes from not the, not the desire to want to share, um,

I feel like I'm in the dark. That's how I feel. Charles seems relatively open, willing to share. I don't think his style was particularly good. The P and L and all that shit, even I don't want to look at that, but he seems pretty open in terms of like, Hey, look, here's my paycheck. Here's my credit card payments. I don't know. What do you think about that? Ashley?

I think I need validation more. Yes, I hear an E-Trade account, but what does that look like? Why can't you show me that account? I've showed you the account. I will show you all the accounts. Watch this. Watch this. This is not the real question. Open up that E-Trade account, Charles. Okay. Ashley, as he's opening it up, I'm going to talk to you for a second. So you've asked him, why won't you show me the E-Trade account? I'm going to get him to show you that.

Okay. How do you think that seeing this is going to make you feel? Probably temporarily, probably better, but then tomorrow, you know, it could change. And then I don't know. I feel like

I'm in the dark about our future. Initially, you asked us the question, how do you feel about money? And he's excited. And it's because he knows what's going on with everything. He sees that everything is making money. I don't see any of this. What I see is our joint account with a zero dollar or a negative amount. So again, how do you think that this is going to make you feel when you get the exact thing that you asked for?

I think it will reassure me, but I want for us to be open about all these things in the future. I'm afraid it'll be a temporary thing and then it will go away. Okay, let's see. Charles, go ahead and share your screen. All right, talk us through what we see on screen here. So these are the total assets that money is coming in. So every time that the assets come in, it's $221,000.

We have a current account value of 7,000, potential benefit of 132,000 for 139. And then I have in this individual account is what I said, every year I get to buy stock at a lower price and it gets invested in here. Every time the additional stock comes in

to my vesting period, it'll start jumping into the potential benefit as soon as I hit certain periods in my work career. So every quarter- Okay, okay, okay, okay. That's enough. Charles, all those words you just said, what do you think Ashley took away from that? Mumbo jumbo. Exactly. Look at her face.

Charles, what's up, man? I'm trying to keep up. I do this for a living. Even I don't know what the hell's going on right now. You just spurted a million numbers at me. Charles, you are not actually addressing what she really wants to know. What is she really asking? Ashley, what are you looking for? Security and awareness of our money and a feeling of our money instead of mine and yours. Okay.

I can show you these numbers every month and we can talk about it. I'm happy to do that if you want to do that on a monthly or quarterly basis. I'm just saying that that money is there and it's growing. It's growing for us. And I can show you that the money is going there from the paycheck. I want to make you feel safe and secure as it relates to the money situation.

And I get caught up in what Ramit had said earlier that I do start spitting out numbers. You know, it may sound like mumbo jumbo to you, but. It is mumbo jumbo, Charles, because you're not actually addressing what she really wants to know, which is what? Where the money is and that she's part of the decision making process. Yeah. So how do you show that, Charles?

I don't know, Rami. I'm trying the best that I can to think how I explain it would be best to explain it. Maybe it's not about explaining. Charles, maybe it's not about explaining. Let me ask my question again. Notice my use of words. How do you show her that you're doing this together? You stuck? Yeah. Okay.

Let me give you a hint. What was the thing that she is most frustrated about when it comes to her money? There's one specific moment. How does it manifest? Yeah. Is that the grocery store? Yeah. Well, there's no money in the accounts. What would go a long way in showing her that you're doing this together? Jointly putting money into a joint account. The money is there. Yeah. And even saying, let me give you an example. Ashley, I know it must be frustrating.

to go to the grocery store and not have enough money in the account to buy groceries. And it seems crazy. We're making over half a million dollars a year. Something's not working right if you go there and you feel like there's no money in the account. So I want to come to an agreement with you so that you never feel that way again, so that you feel safe. Let me pause right there. I'm already crying. It makes me... You haven't even said it and it makes me feel...

I don't want to feel that way ever again. And you saying taking that away, it sounds amazing. Why are you crying? I think it's just, it's really hard. I feel, I don't want to say insecure, but I feel like a failure. I feel like when I can't buy food for the kids, it's the worst feeling in the world. I feel like we are poor and we have no money.

And I don't want that. I want to be able to have a wonderful life for our kids and be able to do something simple like go to the grocery store and buy groceries or pay a bill or buy them clothes. I can't even Venmo them money when they're out and about asking for food when they're not with us, but when they're with their friends. I can't even do that because there's no cash. Okay. So...

Charles, hearing this, what does it make you realize? Anything? I feel terrible. I feel like there's mismanagement of funds and I don't want her to feel that way and her kids to feel that way. Okay. I feel horrible. So Charles, when I spoke to Ashley that way, what did you notice about the way that I approached it? You were curious, trying to understand and listen to

Yeah. I'm sure she's talked about the grocery store example many times in the past, right? And yet when you're listening, you can pick up on it in 15 minutes. People, especially the people you love, when they whisper something, a great author said, treat it like a scream. If they say something once or twice, treat it like they're screaming it in your face. If your wife or your husband says something,

I don't like going to the grocery store and not knowing I have enough. That's a red flag, red alert. Let's fix it. I love you. Okay. And how do you want to fix that? I would like for the two of you to come up with a solution together. So I'm going to sit back and listen to you.

Actually, I would like to create a joint budget monthly from that 90% of money that comes into our joint account on a monthly basis. And we stick to it. That would give adequate money to all our expenses and especially a food bill. And we don't have to have this conversation so that you don't ever have to feel that way.

That would be awesome. And I am down with talking about all this stuff together. I really would like that. I want to be on the same page with you. And if, if you think that I'm spending too much money at the market, then I want to have a conversation about it, you know? So it's just, I would love to love to do that. I want to know about it. It makes me feel secure and,

If I know, if I know what's going on. So let's agree to sit down and create a budget that we both agree on and be open and transparent. Like you said, that was awesome. I love seeing the two of you unify. And I liked it. It's a simple example, groceries. Let's start there. Simple. And then it can become increasingly more complex as you build those skills.

It's demoralizing to know that you make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and yet you can't pay your grocery bill. Now, luckily, their income is so high that once Charles and Ashley shift their focus, they'll start to see things fall into place almost immediately. Surprisingly enough, once I open up the conversation around the joint account and shared expenses,

you'll hear them start to agree and collaborate on a plan. This is the magic of a conscious spending plan. By getting everyone in one sheet, you can move past the mechanics and focus on where you want your money to go.

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So let's just be hypothetical about this for a second. I'm not going to ask you to commit to changing anything about your joint setup. But if you were to create a joint account and each of you contributed to it, how would you decide how much you'd put in there? I would like to put all of our account except for a decided amount of spending money. How much? Tell me. Um...

$1,000 a month, depending on how we choose. Great. That is your proposal. Charles, what's your proposal? 90%. Wow. So one of you says $1,000 and the other says 90% and then 10% is for fun money. That's... You're actually pretty close. Do you realize that? No. That's really close. No.

Did we disagree on something? Wait a second. This is pretty amazing. I'm really happy to hear that. Okay. Okay, that's cool. So let's come to a conclusion right now because you're, you know, go ahead, have the discussion. One of you says a thousand each. One of you says 10% each. Talk about it. I propose 90-10. Would you be okay with that? Yes, I would be okay with that. I would feel like we were working together instead of working against each other.

Can I go above and beyond that and say we have to create a plan for that 90% on a monthly basis and stick to it? Absolutely. I would love to do that with you. That's what I really want. That's what I've been asking is to work with you and be partners in this. And I would like to be a part of that plan and make some decisions as well.

Okay, great. Hey, round of applause for everybody here. Everybody give yourself a round of applause. I'm not kidding. It's sometimes important to do something a little theatrical. And that was cool. You just came to a huge conclusion. Let's take the win. Yeah, absolutely. That's cool. You know, it started with this is like we're up in the clouds and here we go. 90% joint. That's awesome. And 10% to yourself. Also very cool.

Okay. Now I want to get a little bit more specific. So when we say 90, 10, what exactly does that mean? Take home. That's money that comes in from like, I get paid from ADP so I can easily do that 90, 10 split. Okay. Ashley.

I don't have that option through my pay check, so I would have to manually do it. Okay. So I would propose all the money goes in the joint account automatically every first or second when the money comes in, 10% of that money goes to your personal account or vice versa, 90% automatically transfers into the joint account. So that's...

Our money total, not 10% of my own money. It's 10% of what we put in together. Say that again. So it's not 10% of what I'm putting in every month, correct? Yeah, it is. It's 10% of the total of what you're putting in and I'm putting in. So that would be, you're saying now that's going to be 20%. So that'll be 10 and 10.

Whatever amount of money we put in per month, whatever that looks like, what is that number, Rami? I'm going to propose you use simple math. I'm going to propose that for this exercise, Charles, you contribute $4,000 a month into the joint account. And for the example of math here, Ashley, you contribute $1,000 per month. So that's a little bit, no, it would be, no, that's every 15 days.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it would be $8,000 per month for you. And I still don't understand why. I'm still confused as to why you're putting in the same amount per month as I am. And I make $135,000. I don't think you heard what he said.

We're putting in an equal amount of money into the joint account, but you make way more money. Are you guys ready to actually listen to me or do you want to just keep doing what you've been doing? Yeah, sorry. Okay. Because I don't need to be here. Oh, please. You're helping us. What simple math do you want to use for this monthly example? You know, one of your problems is that you both are, I noticed that both of you are

covering up the real issues with layers of complexity. Is it 15 days or 30 days? Is it, I only get paid for 10 months? Is it gross? Is it net? It's too many variables.

I'm just trying to simplify this down so we can actually get the logic and then we can apply it to the numbers. So for this exercise, every month, Charles contributes $4,000 into the joint account. It's just a made up number. And Ashley contributes $1,000. So how do you want to split that up?

So it would be 90, 10. It would be five. Both of us put in $5,000. No, you don't put in $5,000. I mean, total, total, right? I put in a thousand. He puts in four, five total. So 90% of that would stay in the account. And 10% of that, which would be $500 would go into our personal accounts.

Okay. So that's your proposal. You take 10%, you split it in half and each of you gets that same amount. Charles, I'm willing to bet you have a different perspective. I'm okay with that. Really? Yeah. Okay. I want to keep it simple. Great. Love hearing that. I'm going to lock that in and I'll take the win on that one too. Let me just explain what happens so that you don't feel bamboozled. Okay. Typically,

We talk about spending money proportionally. So if somebody makes more, they pay more towards the joint expenses. That's typically pretty fair. Well, also you might apply that to how much percentage they take out. If Charles is making four times the amount, then his discretionary income might be four times higher than yours, Ashley. Okay. That would be fair.

But I'm good with that. I'm sure you're good with that, Charles. But I think what Charles has generously just agreed to is, no, I'm actually totally cool doing 50-50. And what that means is it actually reduces the amount that Charles gets for his discretionary income. And it actually increases the amount that you get, Ashley, for your discretionary income. Okay. So it's quite generous of Charles and fair,

is just a word. Fair is what the two of you decide it is. Okay. I just want to point out, I think Charles is pretty generous to offer that. I think it would be nice maybe if, you know, to acknowledge that he's, he's, he's doing something, you know, quite generous. Yeah. Thank you. I'm, I'm surprised. Um, it's a nice surprise. Thank you for being generous. You're welcome. Awesome. Okay, great. So to simplify and summarize, Charles contributes 4,000 a month,

Ashley contributes $1,000 a month. You have $5,000 in your joint account and you will each take 5% of that money and it goes 5% to Ashley, 5% to Charles. Do we all agree? In theory, yes. In theory, yes. Fine, that's all I want. Perfect. Okay, good. Perfect. Have you heard that phrase, don't let perfect be the enemy of good?

That's what Ashley and Charles have been doing for years. And it's almost driving them to divorce.

They're so obsessed with getting all their numbers perfect that they never even pulled out a sheet of paper and a crayon and just wrote down the important ones. And Charles especially is really living in the weeds, all these complicated factors preventing him from just saying, let's simplify things. How much do we make? How much do we spend? How do we want to contribute to our joint expenses?

In my book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, I talk about the 85% principle. It's better to get 85% of the way there than to dream about getting 100% of the way there and actually do nothing. I think we've established that you both have a vision. You both want transparency. You both want to be open. You have some desires that you should probably talk more about, early retirement, et cetera. I'm looking at these expenses now

And I just want to probe on a few things. So you have a $3,800 a month rent or mortgage, which is quite good. That's great. Yes. Very good. One of the best things I can see from a single individual or a couple is underspending on their housing and you two are doing an awesome job. So well done. Thank you. I love seeing people make strategic decisions like that.

You have a car payment of $475. Is that one car? That's one car. Yeah. Okay. You have $10,000 of debt payments per month. What's this?

No, so that's the credit cards that we're using for the expenses. Oh, you paid off every month. Yeah. Okay. I don't, I don't. Ah, let's show. We talk about this. Yes. Yes. Because this is, this is, we had this conversation before. Okay. Tell me I was carrying a balance.

And so I just, I finally took some savings that we had and I just paid it all off because I can't deal with credit card debt. No more of this. It's just bad money management. I know. Okay. You cannot be drawing from savings to pay off credit cards when you're making $530,000. It makes no sense. Okay. So you made the mistake once. Fine. It's not going to destroy the two of you.

In fact, what's better is that the two of you are now psychologically aligned and structurally, you'll get your conscious spending plan all set up and get it all together. Now that you have 90% of your incomes going to joint, is paying this credit card bill every single month in full going to be a problem? Not for me. No. Not for either of you. You two are a team now. Yes. Yeah. Not, yes. Okay. What's up with this debt that says $135,000?

That's our school loans. Okay. You're going to need to add that to your conscious spending plan as a fixed cost. I would like to hear your initial gut take on how you want to start paying this debt off. Where does it come from? I would like to have it come from considered a bill from the joint. Charles?

I was just going to take my RSUs and then pay off that debt. Not anymore. That's not how it works. Remember, you can't be doing all these sideband things. It's going to totally screw up your entire trust system here. I hate that. I want to get that off my, off our, you know. That's fine. Listen, if you hate, like I said, some people really hate debt, but you have to respect the system. You cannot go around it because that is exactly what got you into this trouble here.

I'm going to go and take the secret money and secretly pay it off and then not tell you about it. So what is a better way? You want to pay off this debt aggressively? I would prefer not to use the RSUs because we would have to pay capital gains. And I would rather make monthly payments if possible. Do you know what the monthly payments will be? Yeah, I think it was calculated like $1,200 or something like that. That's not that much for you guys.

That seems like a lot, right? Well, it seems like a lot because you don't know any of your numbers. Here, let me zoom out and allow you to hear some different numbers. You two make $530,000 a year. You think paying $15,000 a year is a lot? It's not. It's nothing. Come on. You have a lot of money. Listen.

Rich people like you two have a lot of money sitting under their couch cushions. 10,000 here, 50,000 over there. It's exactly, we already found all this money sitting around. There's a lot of money to be found in actually looking at what you are spending and how your money is flowing and you could direct it to your debt. It's not hard. Yeah. Are you on board with me so far? Am I just speaking crazy? No, no, no, no. I'm understanding what you're saying.

I don't know if he really gets it or not, but let me clarify what's going on here. Like a lot of people, Charles absolutely hates debt. That's fine. It's a stylistic choice with money that usually manifests itself by people paying off their debt early, even if it's not the mathematically correct decision. For example, if I had a 30-year mortgage with a 2.7% interest rate, I would never, ever pay it off early.

That's because I know I can make around 8% in the stock market. So if I could, I would stretch that damn loan until I was sitting in a rocking chair and invest the difference so I could make more. Just kidding. Indian people don't get rocking chairs. Again, that's fine. Some people don't mind debt. Other people hate it. Somebody like Charles would pay that debt off early just so he could feel better.

And that's fine. You don't always have to make the mathematically correct decision. You want to make the right one for you. But the problem is virtually nobody actually runs the numbers. Instead, they let their feelings dictate what they do. I hate debt. I need to pay this off. Stop it.

If those same people sat down and ran the numbers for five minutes, they might discover they're losing $75,000 by paying off their mortgage early. In Charles's case, he's also losing the trust of his wife by doing all this secret stuff on the side. It's like dealing with some emo teenager. All right, I don't know if this metaphor is making any sense at all, but basically, Charles, stop doing this shit. Run the numbers. There's a lot of things that you've both agreed to.

Simplifying your money. 90, 10, that is huge. Never worrying about how much you have at the grocery store. These are big, big moves. You want to get on the same page. You want your money to be working together. Simple as that. Let's just check this and move on to the next stuff because we have a lot more important stuff than all this weird stuff about, should we wait on the dead and this and that? No. Put it in the fixed...

category in your conscious spending plan, set up a number every month, and it's drawn directly from your joint account, which is going to be loaded with cash.

Okay. What's that smile on your face, Ashley? I like hearing that. It's simple. Let's get decisive. Yeah. I love the smile on both of your faces. And then you'll notice that the conscious spending plan automatically adds 15%. Did you see that? How'd that feel to see? It was a large amount number. It was like something else, another layer on top of the budget. That's right. But it makes sense because-

Yeah. For you, it's $3,000, which is a considerable amount, but you spend a lot. And that 15% accounts for that anniversary dinner that you forgot to put in here. It accounts for that last minute trip that you had to take and you could not find a cheap flight. It accounts for all of those things where your car breaks down, all of it. Also, let's not forget about the income.

The two have forgot your income was down by $10,000 per month. So that's a relief. Like I said, 10,000 here, 10,000 there starts to add up, right? Yes. So you actually are in a fairly good position. Not fairly good. The two of you are fucking rich. What am I talking about? You make over half a million dollars a year. Let's not kid ourselves. Hey, do you two know that you're rich? No. Well, you are.

You two make $530,000 a year. You are rich. You're wealthy. You better accept it. I know. You're not accepting it. It's hard to accept. Why? I feel it could all go away. I'm trying to make sure that I can. It can't really go away. I mean, you have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested and you have savings. Well, your savings is kind of

Not good, but your investments are quite large. Both of you have good incomes. So even if one of your incomes went away, you still have another income. Nothing like spending valuable time convincing two wealthy people that they're actually wealthy. I'm like, what planet am I on right now? What am I doing here? You guys want to go your whole life playing defense? No, absolutely not. No, I know. I feel like that's where we've been playing though.

Sitting here arguing about Comcast, such a waste of time. That's a $3 question. Literally to the two of you, it's a $3 question. How do you get past that, Rumi? I mean, how do you, it's just a whole different mind. So how do you shift? How do you make that shift? What's that psychological shift? What changes your money psychology is that the two of you do not have a rich life vision together.

Do you want to create one right now? Sure. Yes. All right. What is your rich life? I would like to live in three cities. So where we live now, Newport beach, Keystone, Colorado, and New York city. Okay. I'd like to rotate between all three of them based on what we are doing and how we want to visit our kids while they're in college or wherever they're living for the best of this family. Okay. What about on a given week?

right now, not 10 years from now, now, what is your rich life on a perfect week? I don't know because I'm constantly working. I feel I can't answer that right now. So in other words, you want to wait for seven magical years. And at the end of those seven years, magically, you're going to be able to breathe and then figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life. How old will you be at that time? 57. That sounds like a shitty plan to me.

You want to be almost 60 and then deciding, hmm, what do I want to do? You know anybody who's 60 years old? Yes. Some people in good health, right? Yeah. Some people not so good health. Yes. I think we've all heard stories about people who had grand plans to hike this and that, and two weeks after they retire, they die. Yep. It has a lot. Yeah. It doesn't sound like a great plan. Okay. I guess I got a better answer for that than...

I'd like to travel as much as we can afford with my wife and our kids. Tell me more. Easy for us is to get away every other week like we used to. The closest is about two hours. We can drive to or we can fly to for an hour somewhere to get to and spend quality time doing things that we love to do. And...

Spending as much time and doing as much things with the kids as we possibly can. Okay. So traveling twice a month. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Ashley, your rich life. My rich life is similar to Charles. I really love to travel. We love to play golf and see new places and try new restaurants. I'm a big food person. So yeah,

We, I would love to be able to, to do those things without guilt. We have one kid in college, you know, go out and see him. So that would be my rich life today. Not later, but bigger. What's bigger than every two weeks with the kids? I want to be a professor when I retire my, my act two.

So I want to continue to be a life learner and have an income and make a difference in the world. I own a company too, and I want to continue on with that. So be an online professor and run the business from home so we can do what he said. Awesome. That sounds like a very rich vision. Wow. How are you feeling right now, Ashley? I am feeling hopeful for the first time in a very long time. Yeah.

And I'm excited for the first time in a really long time. Why is that? What happened here today? I wasn't sure it was fixable. And what I've learned today is that we do want similar things and we can work together and we, it will no longer be yours and mine. It'll be we. And so I'm hopeful, very hopeful.

Charles, what about you? You know, I came in extremely nervous, a little afraid. But what it gave me is an ability to now feel that we can create that vision and strategy together. And the minuscule details that you talked about that we're finding out are just meaningless. And they should go away pretty quickly by aligning our vision and strategy and going through these exercises together.

How are both of you feeling right now? A lot better than when I started. Yeah, it feels nice to not be yelling and arguing over these things. How'd you turn that around in two hours? We've been working on it for five years. What stood out to me most about Charles and Ashley is what a tragedy it is to allow yourselves to fight over money when you have more than enough.

All because they were allowing this complication in their life, KSOs, RSUs, all this money to simply go unaddressed. And what I did with them is to simplify it. My role is not to get every last decimal place perfect. My role is to simply get them understanding the basics of their money. And here's what happened. I received a follow-up from Charles and Ashley after I spoke with them. Here's what Ashley wrote.

Charles and I had a great conversation about this over sushi last night. I have regained hope after five years. We've been working on our CSP and completed the first tab with our actual numbers. It took us a little while to comb through everything. We did it without an argument. This is progress.

They were also able to take their fixed costs from 86% to 63% just by getting a clear picture of where their money was going and then recategorizing appropriately. The Conscious Spending Plan is an amazing tool to get on the same page with your partner about money or if you're single, to finally understand where your money is going.

To get your own copy of The Plan for free, go to iwt.com slash episode 47. 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.