274. "We have a newborn and 89% of our income is already spent...Now what?"

Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich speaks with Shelby and Calvin, 31 and 43, who have a new baby and feel trapped by their financial situation. Together they earn about $102,000 a year, but they have just $3,500 in savings, more than $20,000 in debt, and $0 currently going toward savings or investments. Shelby wants more structure and transparency, while Calvin admits that talking about money makes him uncomfortable. Their relationship has also been strained by financial secrecy, including a personal loan Shelby believed had already been paid off. Once their baby expenses are fully accounted for, their fixed costs rise to 89%. Ramit pushes them to stop relying on vague plans and small cuts and instead make bigger changes to how they manage money together. By the end of the conversation, they have a plan to reduce expenses, aggressively pay down debt, save automatically, and become more active financial partners. In this episode, we uncover: Why Calvin kept a personal loan secret Why Shelby does not fully trust him How they earn about $102,000 but still struggle Why their fixed costs reach 89% Why $0 currently goes toward savings Why Calvin says he has been in debt his whole life How he quietly sabotaged their money meetings How their childhoods shaped opposite money habits Why Shelby takes on more financial responsibility Why cutting small expenses isn’t enough How Calvin confronts the impact of his financial decisions How they could pay off their debt in around 11 months How they begin saving automatically Whether they can follow through on the plan Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction (00:03:01) Shelby discovers Calvin’s hidden debt (00:04:55) Why Calvin kept the loan secret (00:05:52) One layoff away from needing help (00:08:28) Calvin wants Shelby to manage the money (00:12:48) Shelby admits she does not fully trust Calvin (00:21:14) Ramit reviews their financial numbers (00:23:59) Calvin has been in debt his whole life (00:24:42) They earn more than $102,000 a year (00:27:36) Their fixed costs reveal the real problem (00:35:39) Calvin admits sabotaging their money meetings (00:38:08) Their fixed costs reach 89% (00:44:58) How Calvin grew up around money (00:50:10) Shelby’s childhood experience with scarcity (00:59:05) Rebuilding financial trust (01:03:03) Ramit rebuilds their Conscious Spending Plan (01:09:17) Creating a bigger financial vision (01:21:07) Redirecting spending toward debt (01:27:38) Calvin confronts his financial decisions (01:54:14) Shelby and Calvin’s follow-up This episode is brought to you by: ElevenLabs | If you run a business or handle customer operations across support, sales, or marketing, start with a demo at https://elevenlabs.io/ramit Skylight | Get $30 off a 15-inch Calendar at https://myskylight.com/ramit ZocDoc | Go to https://zocdoc.com/ramit to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today #sponsored Gelt | Gelt is taking on new clients now. Find out if you qualify at https://joingelt.com/ramit Leesa | Go to https://leesa.com for 25% off mattresses PLUS get an extra $50 off with promo code RAMIT, exclusive for my listeners Start a business in one hour | Join Ramit live on August 19 at 8pm ET for “Start A Business in One Hour.” Reserve your spot at https://iwt.com/business Rich Life Session | Join Spencer Greenberg and Jeremy Stevenson live on August 20 at 4pm ET to learn which self-help techniques actually drive lasting change. Sign up at https://iwt.com/events Connect with Ramit • Get my new book, Money For Couples • Join my Rich Life: Road to $100K program • Download the Conscious Spending Plan • Listen to my book—now on Audible • Get my New York Times best-selling book • Get my no-numbers journal • Other episodes • Instagram • Twitter • YouTube Apply to be coached for free on this podcast at https://iwt.com/apply

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ramit Sethi?

  You have zero going towards savings, zero for investments. You have debt and a baby. If you literally just continue on this path, you will hit a brick wall. How long have you been in debt?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  My whole life. I'll get a paycheck, just pay it off, continue the cycle.

• 0:16Ramit Sethi?

  The two of you make $102,792. What do you think of that number?

• 0:20Speaker 01

  That's enough to not be in debt.

• 0:24Ramit Sethi?

  So why are you where you are?

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Mismanagement, poor decisions.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  He didn't have as much money as I thought he had because he's trying to pay this loan off secretly without me knowing.

• 0:35Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, do you trust each other?

• 0:38Speaker 02

  No, not fully. We've had a lot of stuff.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I haven't prioritized the safety and stability of my family.

• 0:47Ramit Sethi?

  Guys, it's gonna take you a lot to build a healthy relationship with money. You will not walk out of this room without making dramatic changes.

• 0:57Ramit Sethi?

  Is it too late to take control of your money? I get a lot of questions from people wondering that and wondering how they can catch up because they didn't start in their twenties. Now, this is challenging, especially if you don't make hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that is exactly the scenario that we are gonna talk about today. Meet Shelby and Calvin. Calvin is 43, Shelby is 31, and they feel trapped by their financial situation. Shelby applied to speak with me, and let's take a look at what she wrote. "We are unable to plan efficiently and realistically for the future because we have no savings, Calvin has no retirement, and now we have a baby to support." This sounds like a lot.

• 1:41Ramit Sethi?

  It honestly sounds overwhelming, and having a baby with no savings is terrifying. Let's take a look at the numbers. Assets: $17,500. Investments: $9,000. Savings: $3,500. Remember, they have a baby. And debt: $20,326. Total net worth: $9,674. Fixed costs are at 87%. Right there, that explains how they likely feel about their money, feeling trapped, feeling overwhelmed. Investments at zero, savings at zero, and guilt-free spending at 13%. There's something important that I need to flag for today's conversation.

• 2:23Ramit Sethi?

  There's no magic wand that is going to make us be able to go back in time and change their financial situation 20 years ago. Here we are, these are the numbers. It's gonna be a tough discussion, so I want you to prepare for that because there are no secret shortcuts to what's about to happen. So to answer the question that I first asked you, is it too late? Of course not. You can always make changes with your money and with your life. But sometimes, when you are making jointly $100,000 with very little in savings and a new baby, it's pretty hard. We just have tough decisions that we're gonna have to make. Let's take a look at what happens. Let's meet Shelby and Calvin. Shelby, you applied to speak to me, right?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07Ramit Sethi?

  And I remember that you told one of my producers that you were trying to plan for the future, but you discovered some hidden debt. Can you tell me about that?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Calvin let me know. He had taken out a personal loan before, and I was informed that he paid back that money. But I found out six months after or so that that personal loan was not paid off.

• 3:34Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, how much was the amount that he told you?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  It was about $5,000, correct? Yeah.

• 3:41Ramit Sethi?

  And what did you feel when you heard that?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  I felt a little frustrated. It always sucks to be lied to.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  But I took it with ease and just started planning how we're gonna pay this off.

• 3:55Ramit Sethi?

  How did you discover that the loan was not paid off?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  We both got off leave for our baby, and we were talking about how, like, I was confused. Where was the money? Like, I thought we were better off than we were in the moment. And I come to find out the reason he didn't have as much money as I thought he had at the moment was because he's trying to pay this loan off secretly without me knowing.

• 4:27Ramit Sethi?

  So once he said that, your reaction was?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  To start planning on how to work through it.

• 4:34Ramit Sethi?

  You didn't say anything like, hey, how did you not tell me that?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, of course.

• 4:39Ramit Sethi?

  What'd you say?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  It's hard to remember exactly.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  She was upset. She just let me know that

• 4:47Speaker 01

  to not, like, keep those kind of things from her in the future. It's better that, you know, it's out in the open so we can take care of it.

• 4:55Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. Looking back, why did you keep that debt a secret?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Probably embarrassment, mostly.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I initially took out the loan to purchase a ring for her.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  And then we kind of had some difficulties picking one out and finding, you know, the right one. And I was supposed to just take all the money back, but I ended up paying off some other debts from my previous marriage.

• 5:34Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, got it. So you have a baby, you mentioned. How old is the baby?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Eight and a half months.

• 5:38Ramit Sethi?

  Eight and a half months, congratulations.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 5:40Ramit Sethi?

  And are you two married or no?

• 5:42Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:43Ramit Sethi?

  No, okay. And how long have you known each other?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  It'll be two years, November.

• 5:49Ramit Sethi?

  So like a year and a half or so?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:52Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, all right.

• 5:54Ramit Sethi?

  Where are you with your finances today?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Probably like a layoff or a firing away from needing welfare or help.

• 6:03Ramit Sethi?

  Wow.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  We live very separately financially. As often as, like, I tried to bring it together, which, you know, I've tried like Sunday finance meetings and things like that. I don't know how much money he has at any given time. He doesn't really know how much I have. We just understand that we're paying off, you know, we're paying our bills.

• 6:28Ramit Sethi?

  So how would you describe that? Like, how does that feel?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm in the dark a lot of the time because he is the primary, you know, moneymaker in our relationship. I put my trust in him that he's paying the bills that he pays, and I pay the ones that I pay.

• 6:46Ramit Sethi?

  If you had to describe your relationship with money, with the two of you, in a word or two, what would you say?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Uncomfortable.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 6:55Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. What is the role that each of you plays in this relationship with money?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  I'm the planner, the instigator of like financial conversations. I like to learn about money. That's, you know, that's something I've always been into, and I like to bring it up maybe too often.

• 7:17Ramit Sethi?

  How often?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Multiple times a week, probably.

• 7:22Ramit Sethi?

  Got it, okay. How about you, Calvin?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I would rather just send her my paycheck and not have to deal with it, not have to talk about it, and just get it done and, yeah.

• 7:34Ramit Sethi?

  Do you do that?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 7:36Ramit Sethi?

  Why don't you do it?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm just trying to been up, been trying to kind of get caught up on personal, like, credit card stuff.

• 7:50Ramit Sethi?

  Trying to do it on your own?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:53Ramit Sethi?

  In my own relationship, when we first met, I was an optimizer. Like, I have freaking spreadsheets and like, okay, let's talk about our compound interest, which I still do, I love it. What I realized would have been more helpful for me would not be to create yet another spreadsheet or calculation, but actually to connect with my wife, to hear what she's saying, and to be able to create a culture where we can speak in a way that we hear each other. You know? That's what I needed to do in my next role. What would it be for you? What role would you have for the next chapter of your lives together?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  I would like it to be for her to just kind of take the reins on that and kind of be looped in.

• 8:41Ramit Sethi?

  And what would your role be?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Provider.

• 8:44Ramit Sethi?

  Provider means you make money?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:46Ramit Sethi?

  And then hand it over to her?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:49Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Shelby?

• 8:51Speaker 02

  I want it to be a partnership, so I don't want to be the only one doing the work with the money afterwards. Like, I want him to also educate himself on how to deal with it, rather than me be like the leader.

• 9:08Ramit Sethi?

  What do you think? Is it, are you two compatible?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I'm okay with her leading in the finance because that's her area of strength.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  If I could just be there to come alongside her and like...

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Be looped in to make decisions. I'm poor with money. So like, I feel like that would just be a better situation altogether, just to not have my hand in it at all.

• 9:37Ramit Sethi?

  But what did she just say, though?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I heard what she said. She would like it to be a partnership, but I feel like in that way it is. Like, in a, in a group, there's people with strengths and there's people with weaknesses. If, let's say we're writing a paper, if your strength is punctuation and, you know, sentence structure, then you would be the person writing, right? So.

• 9:58Ramit Sethi?

  What would the other person be doing?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Uh, maybe research, maybe, um, I don't know, you know, gathering information for the person to write.

• 10:06Ramit Sethi?

  I take your example. What's the chore that one of you does?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  You take out the trash mostly.

• 10:12Ramit Sethi?

  Taking out the trash, I can understand. But it would be a little weird if it was one person solely doing baby stuff, right? It's just not really appropriate these days. We're both involved, we both want to be involved. Money is very similar to a baby. It cuts across everything. It's where you live, it's what you eat, it's what you're able to do, it's how much safety you have, your roof. So I will gently challenge you that your vision of where you would like to be, right off the bat, that's gonna be really tough. I don't see any couples who are good with money, where one person goes, here you go, you deal with it. How does that strike you?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand it.

• 10:54Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Would you be open to participating with the money?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:59Ramit Sethi?

  That was tough. That was like, whoa, big breath. What was that?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Like I said, I'm not good with money, like.

• 11:07Ramit Sethi?

  Were you good with a baby before you had a baby?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm the oldest of 12, so I've been raising kids since I was a kid, so.

• 11:13Ramit Sethi?

  Whoa. Were you good back then with a little sibling?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 11:17Ramit Sethi?

  Probably not.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I mean, they didn't die, so.

• 11:20Ramit Sethi?

  In that way, you were great. Like, the first time you meet a baby, certainly the first time you have a baby, you're not automatically good, right? It's a skill. Same thing with money. I'm trying to demystify money, because I know that, um, for some people, like, they're really good at sports. For some people, they understand nutrition. And we kind of get that. We're like, okay, like, you're really good at sports, but what we don't realize is, oh, there was a lot that went into that. They've been running since they were a little kid, they played with their parents, all that stuff. Money's a skill just like anything else. And it might feel like, you, you used an interesting word earlier, you said, I'm poor with money.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:00Ramit Sethi?

  I want to hear more about that. But obviously, there's some things you have gone through with money, which, which we'll talk about. But it's a skill like anything else. And so the important thing is that we all agree, you two want to be partners. Because if you want to be good with money, you've both got to be in it. Okay, here are the clues that I'm noticing already. Shelby wants more transparency. She wants more access. She's trying to convince her partner, please participate in the finances. Calvin says he wants to be a provider. He also says he would like to not really have to think about money at all. In fact, he'd rather just give the money to her to manage.

• 12:42Ramit Sethi?

  And yet, he hasn't done that. So there's something going on here. Let's see if I can find out more. Do you trust each other?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll trust her.

• 12:52Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Shelby?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  No, not fully.

• 12:54Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Is that because of the secret debt?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Um, that didn't help. I mean, it's a little lie that builds into, you know, breaking trust.

• 13:05Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. I appreciate the honesty. It's like, we're here, we might as well just be honest with each other, and then we can try to figure out what we can do about the situation. What would it look like to be able to trust Calvin?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Take your time.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Sorry?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  No need to apologize.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 13:25Ramit Sethi?

  Take your time.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I don't really know.

• 13:28Ramit Sethi?

  What's going through your head right now?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  We've had a lot of stuff.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I recently broke trust in our relationship. I was having, um, as you can say, emotional relationships with, um, women, and was not honest about things. So, um, that has caused a lot of mistrust.

• 13:56Ramit Sethi?

  Got it. Shelby?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:59Ramit Sethi?

  Is that accurate?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  For the most part, yes.

• 14:01Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Have you all spoken to a therapist?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  We are.

• 14:06Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, actively, good. Great. And, um, where are you in your relationship?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  We're together, working through it. Um, that, you know, we don't know where we're gonna end up, but we're trying to end up together.

• 14:22Ramit Sethi?

  Got it. Okay, thank you for being honest. That, that really helps me understand the background of what's going on here. I'm not a couples therapist. I'm glad you are seeing one. That's awesome. The thing that I can help with is money. So although all of this is tied together, obviously, you're here to talk about money. So in light of what you have just shared, is it okay if we focus on the money part?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:52Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Look at Calvin's body language. A lot of deep breaths, a lot of low energy. It's telling me that he's not comfortable with money. And while he has shown up here, which I appreciate, I get the sense that he does not like talking about money at all. That has implications for how they manage money together as a couple. If you hate money, or you hate talking about money, point blank, you're never gonna get good at it. How can you get good at something that you hate? So part of what I try to do with couples is make them realize, hey, money isn't something that's just a bunch of confusing numbers. It's actually your ability to go out and order an amazing meal, or put your kids in

• 15:34Ramit Sethi?

  math tutoring class, or be able to travel. Money is not just numbers. Money is your life, the one that you choose to create. I'm really curious to see what their numbers say. I'm gonna dig into those right after this. One of my friends recently had to call her phone provider to ask a simple question about her account. It took her over 30 minutes to finally get connected to someone. Answering the question only took like 45 seconds. If you run a business, do not do this to your customers. Instead, I recommend you use 11 Agents by 11 Labs, and make their experience great from the very beginning. 11 Agents is a platform for AI voice and chat agents that can actually listen, understand, and resolve customer issues. They handle the

• 16:16Ramit Sethi?

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• 16:55Ramit Sethi?

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• 17:39Ramit Sethi?

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• 18:24Ramit Sethi?

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• 18:42Ramit Sethi?

  Do you know the number one thing you need to start a business? It's not a logo, it's not a website. You need one hour on August 19th. Join me live on August 19th where I'm going to teach you how to start a business in one hour. I'm going to go through the exact process that I have taught thousands of people who successfully sold services and products. You can reserve your seat right now at iwt.com/business. And if you've been thinking about starting a business for months or years, this is the time to do it. Give me one hour, let me show you exactly how to do it. Join today at iwt.com/business. So you want to be more productive? Well, all you need is yet another productivity app, right?

• 19:26Ramit Sethi?

  I think that we've all gone through this cycle where we find this amazing app and then a few days later, we stop using it. But what if the real problem was the tool, not you? That is the question that mathematician Spencer Greenberg and clinical psychologist Jeremy Stevenson set out to answer in our latest Rich Life session. 106 self-help books, 495 techniques, and 12 that matter. On this call, which we are hosting for you, they're cutting through the noise and they're going to share a simple map of what actually drives real change. So you can learn why some of your old productivity systems didn't work and build a new one that actually will.

• 20:05Ramit Sethi?

  You can save your seat to join the call on August 20th at iwt.com/events. What was it like putting this conscious spending plan together?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  It was a struggle for me.

• 20:18Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, because again, that uncomfortable feeling with money.

• 20:23Ramit Sethi?

  What was it like for you, Shelby?

• 20:24Speaker 02

  I loved it.

• 20:25Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, were you the one driving it?

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 20:28Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, who typed it in?

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Me.

• 20:30Ramit Sethi?

  You typed it in, but you were asking him for his numbers? And what was the energy like that first time?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  I was excited, he was not.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Miserable.

• 20:38Ramit Sethi?

  Miserable.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  He didn't want to be there.

• 20:40Ramit Sethi?

  Kind of like grumpy, hands crossed, that kind of thing?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I just, I was, yeah, I was just like, I just didn't, I didn't want to do it.

• 20:48Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, y'all match energy on anything?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  No, not usually.

• 20:53Ramit Sethi?

  Ah, so this is the dynamic. So you have Shelby who's kind of excited. And then Calvin, your energy is?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  It depends on what it is. If it's fishing, we're both excited.

• 21:03Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, nice.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  But if it's, you know, going over money, it's, she's excited and I'm, you know, dragging my feet.

• 21:13Ramit Sethi?

  Got it.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:15Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, that's interesting. Let's take a look at the numbers. Shelby, will you read off the word in bold? And then the number next to it for this entire box, please?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Assets, $17,500. Investments, $9,000. Savings, $3,500. Debt, $20,326. Total net worth, $9,674.

• 21:41Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what do you make of these numbers?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  It's rough. I mean, it's not great, but we're in the positive and I'm going to be positive about that.

• 21:52Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, are you always optimistic?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  I feel like I balance out whoever, you know, I'm working with, whether it be friends or a partner. So I'm going to be positive about it because I've seen his face when I tell him the number and it's not usually super happy, so.

• 22:12Ramit Sethi?

  And do you ever feel it's okay for you to not be positive?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I have plenty of times, you know, I'm not super positive, but I try to keep it, you know, as light as I can.

• 22:27Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, and Calvin, what do you make of these numbers?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Um, they're scary.

• 22:34Ramit Sethi?

  What part?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Savings and the amount of debt.

• 22:40Ramit Sethi?

  The $20,326, what type of debt is that?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  That's my car loan and some credit card debt.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  And the other.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Oh, and the loans.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Two loans.

• 22:54Ramit Sethi?

  $5,000 for the first loan?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:56Ramit Sethi?

  And then?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  We have.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Two, what was it?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  $1,500 left on the ring.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Okay, the ring we ended up going with.

• 23:05Ramit Sethi?

  How much was the ring?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Uh, $2800.

• 23:08Ramit Sethi?

  And how much credit card debt?

• 23:10Speaker 02

  I have like $200 and some odd dollars right now.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Right now, I'm probably at about $600.

• 23:15Ramit Sethi?

  $600, what's the debt for?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Honestly, living. I took a new job and the earning potential is more at this new job, but it's not immediate. And my previous job, there was more money like upfront. So things were a little bit easier. So now it's like pay bills and then kind of living off of the credit cards until it's time to do it again.

• 23:45Ramit Sethi?

  How long has that been going on?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Um, about three months.

• 23:49Ramit Sethi?

  Who's the one who charges the credit card?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  The $600 is his credit cards. We, we're separate. I usually pay off my credit cards by the end of the month.

• 24:00Ramit Sethi?

  How long have you been in debt?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  My whole life.

• 24:05Ramit Sethi?

  I can see the way you talk about it. You talk about it like it's a mosquito bite. It's a minor nuisance. If I were in credit card debt, I would talk about it like I am drowning underwater. Is there a future where you change your behavior so that you're not in debt?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  I hope so, that's why I'm here.

• 24:27Ramit Sethi?

  Good, great answer. Okay, let's go to the income. Calvin, can you read off your combined gross monthly income?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  $8566.

• 24:37Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, $8,566, which means that together, if we just combine for a second, the two of you make $102,792. Did you know that?

• 24:48Speaker 02

  We were in the ballpark.

• 24:51Ramit Sethi?

  How much did you think?

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Well, it used to be like $105 to $110,000.

• 24:55Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  But with the new job.

• 24:58Ramit Sethi?

  It's less, but it could be more.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:00Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what do you think of that number?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  It could be better.

• 25:03Ramit Sethi?

  What do you think, Calvin?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I think with that number, we shouldn't be where we are.

• 25:09Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, tell me more.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  I feel like that's enough to not be in debt.

• 25:17Ramit Sethi?

  So why are you where you are?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Mismanagement, poor decisions.

• 25:22Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, I like this. Which decisions?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Mostly me. I don't have the, that sense of urgency when it comes to the debt. It's like, I don't know, I guess I feel like, you know, I'll get a paycheck, just pay it off, kind of continue the cycle.

• 25:41Ramit Sethi?

  How many people that you know in your life are in debt?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Everybody.

• 25:48Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, so it's just part of life. It sucks, but it's just part of life.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:53Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, for the breakdown on the income, I want to highlight a couple of things here. We have one person, I think this is Calvin, who makes $6,100 a month. And then we have Shelby who makes $2,400 a month. Shelby, what do you do for a living?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Right now, I'm working part-time as like a bartender customer service at a bowling alley.

• 26:12Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, and are you in school as well?

• 26:14Speaker 02

  I, I am, it's changed right now, but I'm going back in the fall.

• 26:17Ramit Sethi?

  And how long will it take you to get your degree?

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Two to three years.

• 26:22Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, let's say three. I don't like ranges, I always like to pick the conservative number. So three years, I saw somewhere in your CSP you have some school costs, is that for you?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:32Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so three years of that, and then will you be able to increase your earnings?

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:37Ramit Sethi?

  How much?

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Drastically, probably, yeah.

• 26:41Ramit Sethi?

  What do you think, like how much would you make annually?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  I can make at least like 65 to 70K.

• 26:47Ramit Sethi?

  No kidding?

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:49Ramit Sethi?

  That's a big deal. Okay, good to know. Calvin, you're at $6,100 a month gross. Something about a bonus?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, so right now I'm trending at my job towards a decent bonus.

• 27:04Ramit Sethi?

  How much?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  I just started the job and right now I'm like five for six on sales. So it'll be probably around like $1,500 for that quarter.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  So probably like.

• 27:15Ramit Sethi?

  $6,000 a year?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:17Ramit Sethi?

  Ballpark?

• 27:18Speaker 02

  It's ballpark.

• 27:18Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what do you do for a living?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I'm a project manager for a restoration company.

• 27:23Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Have you all talked about this number before? How much would this potential commission end up being at the end of the year?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Yes, we talked about it.

• 27:31Ramit Sethi?

  And you feel confident you can get 5K in bonus?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:36Ramit Sethi?

  Great, now we're cooking. All right, let's go down to the rest of the numbers. Fixed costs, what's that number?

• 27:42Speaker 02

  87%.

• 27:43Ramit Sethi?

  What does that tell you?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  That we're not doing great.

• 27:47Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, you're drowning.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:48Ramit Sethi?

  This number right here explains your anxiety with money because you're the one who manages the money, correct?

• 27:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  For the most part.

• 27:57Ramit Sethi?

  Wow, interesting answer. One person says no, the other says for the most part. This kind of explains part of the problem, right?

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:05Ramit Sethi?

  What do you, what do you all think?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I don't manage the money. If I managed the money, I feel like it would be different.

• 28:12Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, okay.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  And I know that's terrible to say, but that's how I feel.

• 28:16Ramit Sethi?

  Why is it terrible?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  It's the truth.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Because it's, it's nothing, I don't want to down him like.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's not down to me at all. It's the truth. If you were like, yeah, it would be different.

• 28:27Ramit Sethi?

  Let me say it a different way. This is how I might say it. I might say, right now it feels really confusing because we both kind of do something with the money, but it's not really clear who owns what. And if I were just in charge of it, I could probably at least have control over everything. I could make sure that the numbers fit. It feels a little frustrating that he won't go along with that. But what I really want is for both of us to be involved together. Did I capture that accurately?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:00Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Have you ever said something like that to him?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  I've told him I want us to be partners and by him just giving over a paycheck to me, it doesn't feel like it's a partnership.

• 29:12Ramit Sethi?

  Agreed. What do you think about that?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I don't necessarily agree. I don't want to not know about anything, but I, I just feel like in that area, like she's better at it.

• 29:25Ramit Sethi?

  When you think about money right now, what do you feel about it?

• 29:29Speaker 01

  I don't know. It gives me anxiety. Yes. I didn't grow up with money. Um, I didn't have, you know, much as a kid. I didn't have a, my own bed until I was an adult and out on my own, like my relationship with money is like, if I have it, I want to enjoy it. Now, and that's just, has, that's what it's been since I, like my whole working life. So like, I take care of my bills, but like, if I have money, like I want to enjoy it.

• 30:02Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. Is it like easy come, easy go?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:06Ramit Sethi?

  Money's burning a hole in my pocket, that kind of thing?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:09Ramit Sethi?

  And is that working for you?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:11Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. You still feel that way, but you can also see that it's not working for you.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I know it, there needs to be a change. I just don't know how.

• 30:20Ramit Sethi?

  Oh.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  To change it, so.

• 30:22Ramit Sethi?

  That's great. I don't mind that. I don't mind if somebody accepts that they need to make a change, they just don't know how. That part is relatively straightforward. I could help with that. It's when people don't really know they need to make a change, or they're not willing to accept what it will take. I can't make somebody want that. Let's take a look at the fixed cost real quick. So at 87%, you're drowning. You're effectively spending more than you make every month. And with a savings of $3,500 and a baby, if the income went away, do you know how long you would last?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  A month.

• 31:01Ramit Sethi?

  Less.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Like a couple of weeks.

• 31:03Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:04Ramit Sethi?

  What would you do?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  I would have to figure it out.

• 31:07Ramit Sethi?

  Let's just figure it out right now, because it might happen. What would you do?

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Well, I've already been trying to get a second job, so I would continue that.

• 31:16Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  He's really good at finding opportunities and, and work. And we can also ask family members for help if we needed.

• 31:26Ramit Sethi?

  How would they help?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Probably put like a loan of some sort.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  I don't like asking.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Family members.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  I don't either. I don't either, but.

• 31:35Ramit Sethi?

  I don't like waking up early, but I have to do it. What the hell? I understand, not to joke about it. I, I understand there are family dynamics, but there are also things sometimes we have to do. What I'm trying to get us to do is think ahead, because it's quite possible. And I, I have learned that most people don't like to even plan ahead at all with things like career, uh, family, certainly money. But you know what they hate even more? Is planning ahead for something to go wrong. They might plan ahead about a vacation they're taking or a car they're gonna buy, but they almost never plan about, hey, let's get serious about what happens if one of us loses our job. You know what they say? We'll figure it out. And when that day comes, because it does come for all of us,

• 32:20Ramit Sethi?

  they are so shocked and they have to go into panic mode. I'd rather we just talk about it now and just get some plans out on the table. What do you say?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's why.

• 32:31Ramit Sethi?

  That's why you're here?

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:33Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, I can help, alright.

• 32:36Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so a couple of other things here. On your fixed costs, I note, like, one person pays for one thing and another person pays for another thing. Groceries are more to you, Shelby, but he pays part of it.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:49Ramit Sethi?

  How do you decide on this?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  I get cash tips. And so when we're shopping, like, I shop during the day while he's at

• 32:58Speaker 02

  work. I generally like figure out what's for dinner. But we also, sometimes he'll pay for the groceries when we're out.

• 33:05Ramit Sethi?

  It seems like a kind of a loose agreement.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  If we're together, I try to.

• 33:10Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Pay.

• 33:10Ramit Sethi?

  Try means it's loose.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is loose.

• 33:14Ramit Sethi?

  Can I tell you all something? I [BLEEP] hate loose. I hate sloppy. I don't like it. Not with, like, basic stuff like this.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:23Ramit Sethi?

  Because if we can't get dialed in on, like, who pays for groceries and how much, then how are we gonna get dialed in on more advanced concepts like debt payoff, retirement, investment fees, stuff like that?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:36Ramit Sethi?

  Like, we gotta raise the bar. Are you all with me?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:39Ramit Sethi?

  There needs to be a set of rules that are crystal clear. My wife and I have a rule about the dishwasher. Not because we're punitive or we're like freaks. It's so that we know at 9:00 AM every day, that dishwasher is empty. So you could be blind and you can reach in there and it's clean. We know that. I want you to have that kind of confidence about your money. The same way you know if the baby's been fed and, and bathed and all, you don't have to discuss it every day. You can decide, and if you need to change the rules, you can change the rules. It's your rules. But I want no slop. I want clarity. How's that strike you?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Something we've talked about.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 34:25Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, talked about it?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 34:28Ramit Sethi?

  So Shelby wants clarity, I can tell.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've tried different methods, especially with groceries. We've tried to figure out, like, let's keep all the receipts from when we shop so we can gauge how much we're fully spending on groceries.

• 34:44Ramit Sethi?

  Let me guess, no one ever looked at those receipts?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  That, yeah, it didn't, it didn't.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  No, they set, they set it in a jar.

• 34:50Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, who wants to, in a jar? Who wants to look at receipts? Okay, okay, it was a valiant effort. I appreciate it. So that didn't work. So then what did you do?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Then I just moved to gauging how much of my tips, you know, I used. And then he did his thing and I kind of just asked, what the [BLEEP] the range? What are we working with?

• 35:09Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, that's quite interesting, actually. So you first both said, let's figure out this grocery thing. And then who proposed the receipts?

• 35:19Speaker 02

  I did.

• 35:20Ramit Sethi?

  You did. And then your response was?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 35:23Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, great. So you, you went along, you put the receipts in a jar?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  When we had scheduled our finance meetings, we were supposed to pull them out and.

• 35:32Ramit Sethi?

  Good. What happened?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  I did it. I did it separately from you.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  I kind of quietly sabotaged not doing.

• 35:43Ramit Sethi?

  Wow.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  The stuff.

• 35:45Ramit Sethi?

  Why'd you do that?

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Because it's uncomfortable.

• 35:47Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:48Ramit Sethi?

  And so when things are uncomfortable, your response is?

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Don't.

• 35:52Ramit Sethi?

  Don't do them?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:53Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. So you sabotaged it, and then Shelby, your response was?

• 35:56Speaker 02

  I just kind of gave up.

• 35:59Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, I don't mind if things don't work. Like, we're all trying stuff, right? We try lots of different stuff, but giving up, we can't do that. We gotta find a different way. And so if the receipts don't work, cool, we could laugh about it. Okay, this didn't work. Calvin, since you didn't enter it, you're in charge of coming up with our next strategy of how we're gonna make sure we're on top of this. You didn't say that, right?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:21Ramit Sethi?

  You took it on yourself.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Of, yeah.

• 36:23Ramit Sethi?

  Of course.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  It's been made clear that that's kind of my role.

• 36:27Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, is it? And you accept that role?

• 36:29Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, sure. I find joy in trying to figure out problems.

• 36:35Ramit Sethi?

  What if the very approach that you are taking with money in this relationship is actually co-creating this dynamic?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Oh, it 100% is.

• 36:45Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:47Ramit Sethi?

  How so?

• 36:48Speaker 02

  I think I don't want to upset him. And I think if I pry or push too hard,

• 36:57Speaker 02

  I don't know what's gonna happen.

• 37:00Ramit Sethi?

  So you keep doing it? Taking it on more. It's not really effectively working. You don't even know how much he makes, where he's spending, but you don't want to hurt his feelings.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  I don't want to deal with the frustration.

• 37:15Ramit Sethi?

  What's the solution here?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  For me to get uncomfortable or get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

• 37:20Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, how?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  It's by doing.

• 37:22Ramit Sethi?

  It's just words, though. Because if you were just gonna do it, you would have done it.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:27Ramit Sethi?

  So what's the real solution? It's not just like, try harder. That's not a solution.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  I mean, this was the first step. Like, I could have said, no, like, I don't want to.

• 37:36Ramit Sethi?

  That's true. It does take a lot to come here.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  I'm sitting here being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

• 37:41Ramit Sethi?

  True. What's the next step?

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Come up with a plan, put it in action.

• 37:48Ramit Sethi?

  Agreed.

• 37:50Ramit Sethi?

  And then?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Follow through.

• 37:51Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, I like this. I like this. Do you agree you want to add anything, Shelby?

• 37:56Speaker 02

  No, that sounds, yeah, that sounds good.

• 37:59Ramit Sethi?

  We're gonna take this CSP, before we take it off screen, I just want to point out, we caught that the baby items were not being factored in, so it increased your fixed cost by 2%. You're now at 89%.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 38:12Ramit Sethi?

  So you're effectively spending more than you make every single month, which is a huge problem. You have zero going towards savings, zero for investments, you have debt. I would say that your situation, I would call it dire. It's working in the sense that you can pay bills, but every month you are falling behind, and you're hoping you get this bonus, but even if you get the bonus, it doesn't change anything, it's just money used for past expenses.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:44Ramit Sethi?

  If you literally just continue on this path, you will hit a brick wall. And with a baby, it's as serious as it gets. So can we all agree that you will not walk out of this room without making dramatic changes? Is that why you're here?

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  I mentioned that over coffee.

• 39:04Ramit Sethi?

  Tell me.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  This morning, just like, things are gonna have to change after today.

• 39:09Ramit Sethi?

  Mm-hmm. What were you envisioning?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  We like small joys daily, so like, you know, going to get coffee and, you know, things like that. Like, we were really good for a while at cooking at home. It's kind of fallen off, but just getting back on track with things that we were doing before, and staying consistent.

• 39:33Ramit Sethi?

  I'm with you. What do you think, Shelby?

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, all of that.

• 39:36Ramit Sethi?

  And?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  I think there needs to be like more transparency between the two of us, because we both don't know each other's daily spending or whatever, maybe.

• 39:48Ramit Sethi?

  I think if you're living together, I think if you have a baby together, like, these questions about transparency are like, it's happening. Like, if you've seen a baby's ass, then what are we talking about? Like, come on. Transparency is the baseline, and I'm not trying to get you all to baseline. I'm trying to get you to a rich life. So, it sounds like we all agree, before anybody leaves this room, you're gonna make some dramatic changes. Are we on the same page?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 40:19Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, amazing. I don't think they understand how serious the situation is. This is how so many people go through life until they hit a brick wall. And if I take a look at the numbers, I am terrified. I see fixed costs over 85%. That's a ballgame right there. It means you're spending more than you make every single month. I see basically no investments and no savings, which means not only are they at risk today, but they are definitely at risk tomorrow. They will live in poverty if nothing changes. And then, a new baby. A new baby introduces all kinds of uncertainty, not just financial, all kinds of other uncertainty.

• 41:04Ramit Sethi?

  And so even if this couple had no baby and were operating at their absolute best, this would be a bad situation. But with a baby, no savings, no investments, debt, we're in a really bad position. My gut take is that they are not really aware of why they do the things they do with money. So if I can hold up a mirror and help them really see their own relationship with money, that might help them change. What happens if you're away from home and you need to see a doctor? My coworker, for example, needed to see a doctor ASAP while she was in another state, and she used our sponsor, Zocdoc. Here's what she said. "I searched by condition. I found someone local. It showed me people who had same-day appointments who also took my insurance. I found a great

• 41:47Ramit Sethi?

  doctor who didn't make me wait, and it was a total relief, especially when I was away from home." If you need to find a good doctor fast, use this episode's sponsor, Zocdoc. Zocdoc lets you search and compare local, in-network doctors. Whether you're looking for primary care, dentistry, eye care, or anything else, you can easily search by specialty or symptoms, and you can book in-network appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Getting an actual appointment is easy. You just look through the real appointment openings, click what works for your schedule, and book it instantly. And what's great is their appointments happen fast, usually within 24 to 72 hours. No more

• 42:29Ramit Sethi?

  waiting months and months to get the care that you need. Your health matters, and taking care of yourself should not be complicated. Find and book the right doctor with Zocdoc. Head to zocdoc.com/ramit to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash ramit.

• 42:53Ramit Sethi?

  It's kind of funny when I talk to small business owners who are super frustrated by the vendors that they work with, because I'm like, y'all know you're the boss, right? You can fire them, you can make changes today. So if you don't like the platform that you are working with, move off of it. I've done it many times. If a CPA that you are working on goes dark on you after April, find somebody who's better. And that is where our partners at Gelt come in. Gelt is a modern CPA firm that helps your business take control of your tax strategy year-round. By working with Gelt, you get access to one dedicated tax strategist with real human expertise powered by cutting-edge technology that handles the rest. And right now, they have two Q3 exclusive offers. Extension Rescue, where

• 43:38Ramit Sethi?

  Gelt takes over your tax extension with fast onboarding and no stress, keeping you deadline safe. The Retirement Catch-Up, where Gelt models your prior-year retirement contribution opportunities to maximize what's on the table before October 15th. This offer is included for all new clients this quarter. A great CPA is a year-round partner who stays in touch with you, and Gelt is taking on new clients now. Now is the time for business owners to get ahead, not in January. So find out if you qualify at joingelt.com/ramit. That's join G-E-L-T dot com slash ramit. I want to learn how you got here. I can see a lot of fingerprints on your conscious

• 44:23Ramit Sethi?

  spending plan. Calvin, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were a kid?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  I mean, nobody really talked about it, because we didn't have much unless, you know, we were trying to get more. I was raised by a single mother, and, you know, she was on like, you know, assistance. And then, I lived with my great-grandmother for a while, and then I lived with my grandmother who never talked about money.

• 44:56Ramit Sethi?

  And you mentioned something, I didn't quite catch it, something about a bed as an adult. What was that?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, growing up, I'd never really had my own bed, like, a bed that was mine that I slept in.

• 45:08Ramit Sethi?

  Meaning you shared it with your siblings?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Like, I slept on the floor, or, yeah, shared a bed with my brother, yeah.

• 45:15Ramit Sethi?

  So would you say you were poor?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 45:18Ramit Sethi?

  And what were the other ways that you knew you were poor? Sleeping on the floor is one.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Not having, you know, school supplies or clothes, stuff like that, just, you know, the lack.

• 45:33Ramit Sethi?

  Did you work when you were a kid or a teenager?

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Once I hit, like, the age to start working, yeah. I've been working ever since then.

• 45:44Ramit Sethi?

  What'd you do with the money you got as a kid, a young adult?

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I didn't save it. Took care of myself so that my mom or a grandmother wouldn't have to do it. Bought my own clothes, shoes, fed myself.

• 45:56Ramit Sethi?

  What was your mom's relationship with money?

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Get it, spend it. I mean, she kind of had to, though, with all the mouths to feed and clothes, shoes, things to buy for, you know, so many kids.

• 46:10Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  But she didn't work.

• 46:12Ramit Sethi?

  She didn't work?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 46:13Ramit Sethi?

  Because she was taking care of the kids?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:15Ramit Sethi?

  Got it. And is everybody out of the house now, your siblings?

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:21Ramit Sethi?

  Is your mom still alive?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:23Ramit Sethi?

  What's she like now in terms of money?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  She doesn't have any.

• 46:27Ramit Sethi?

  Ah, no mouths to feed anymore?

• 46:29Speaker 01

  No, she's living with one of my sisters.

• 46:33Ramit Sethi?

  What messages do you think you grew up with that you are bringing to this relationship with money?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Probably that it's more of like a tool to use than something to be looked at as like...

• 46:47Speaker 01

  You know, putting it away, saving it. I didn't grow up with a respect for finances or money or, you know, it's like you get it. It buys things, buy things.

• 46:59Ramit Sethi?

  I like your acknowledgement that you did not grow up respecting money. In my experience, very few people actually respect money. Even people who make a ton of it don't respect it. Because if you respect something, you talk about it, you have a point of view on it. You plan for it. All these things that we do when we respect something, whether it's our body, whether it's our partner, mom or dad, we respect it, we treat it with respect. Mostly with money, I find that people grew up, their parents didn't really talk to them about it. If anything, they modeled like, we can't afford it. And then people grow up just being like, well, I guess money's bad, but I like having it. So I'm just gonna spend it.

• 47:45Ramit Sethi?

  It's just a very unhealthy relationship. Shelby, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?

• 47:51Speaker 02

  I didn't hear much from my mom. She was in active addiction most of the time she had us. I was in foster care twice between her having me for like three years. But I remember a game she would play with us was like, throw the smallest in the dumpster and see what you can find.

• 48:11Ramit Sethi?

  Throw the, you, how old were you?

• 48:14Speaker 02

  I was like three to six.

• 48:15Ramit Sethi?

  Wait, this is a game I have not played before. Throw the youngest in the dumpster, that's you. And then you fish out food.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Not food per se, usually just like things we need or want. Like on a hot summer day, I remember, you know, I found a pool that was like brand new, but it just had a little gash. So we patched it up and put it in the backyard. Something like that.

• 48:40Ramit Sethi?

  What do you think about that, looking back?

• 48:43Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it was really fun in the moment, but looking back, that's really sad. And I don't think my mom, even though she was getting assistance for us, I don't think she was allocating that money to us. So it is sad in that, in that respect.

• 49:00Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, okay. Can you keep going?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so then we went, you know, back to foster care and my great aunt and uncle, who I had never met, found us by seeing a newspaper article about my mom being, you know, taken to prison. So they were like, we're gonna take them in. And it was a whole different lifestyle change. I went from a foster care home that was a single wide trailer on a patch of dirt to being in Portland, Oregon, in a beautiful house with four acres of wooded property behind me.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  It was dramatic.

• 49:39Ramit Sethi?

  What was that like?

• 49:40Speaker 02

  I think I was in awe for most of, you know, those first few months. You're just not accustomed to having, you know, all of that and, and more. My, my great uncle was very close to becoming CEO of a company. So he, yeah, he was really great with money. And my aunt, she was a stay at home mom and he did, did all of that, the money making.

• 50:08Ramit Sethi?

  What age were you when you went to this four acre house?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Six.

• 50:12Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, young.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:14Ramit Sethi?

  And is that where you grew up?

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:17Ramit Sethi?

  What do you remember them saying about money?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  My uncle would generally say, you know, save. We would talk investments, he still does to this day.

• 50:28Ramit Sethi?

  Really?

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he started giving us allowances. And my sisters generally spent, they were older, they would spend it immediately. I saved every allowance up until I was 18 to buy my first car.

• 50:44Ramit Sethi?

  Really?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was not chosen like that. It was more just like, I had a situation come up and I could no longer live with my great aunt and uncle. So I went to try to build a relationship with my mom in Spokane. So I got a car and.

• 51:01Ramit Sethi?

  I'm sorry to hear that.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  It's all good.

• 51:03Ramit Sethi?

  Once you left, did you live with your mom?

• 51:06Speaker 02

  No, I hopped around friends of mine, like their couches or I paid rent at one apartment for a little while, while I was finishing up my high school degree. I wasn't getting the relationship from my mom that I thought I was gonna maybe build. So I came back to Portland.

• 51:25Ramit Sethi?

  Got it, and you've been working ever since? Okay, what made you decide to go to school? The school that you're in right now?

• 51:34Speaker 02

  I've been working on my education for so, so many years. Like I, I have an associate's, but it took 10 years to get that. Cause I've had to stop, start, stop, start.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  I, I've always known I want a real career. But it's just taking a lot longer than I.

• 51:54Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. When you look back on the way that you grew up around money, everything from the game that your mom played in the dumpster to leaving the care of your mom and joining this other family with the huge house. When you look back on it, what do you take away from the lessons you learned?

• 52:17Speaker 02

  I think I've always had an anxiety around money where if I have it, I do wanna save as much as possible. Because if you don't have it, you, there's a lot of bad things that come with not having money. And you, you have to figure it out and you have to go into survival mode if you don't have it.

• 52:38Ramit Sethi?

  It's quite interesting that both of you grew up with a lot of scarcity, but your reactions to money is in many ways opposite. Shelby, you save, or you try to save. And Calvin, you spend it and say, worse comes to worse, I'll figure it out. Is there a vision together for what you want this relationship to be? Cause right now, the way I see it, it seems pretty overwhelming. Like you may have gotten used to it, but when I look and I see you got a young baby with two weeks of savings, it's not normal. It's really, really risky.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I would like us to be in a position where like we had a very comfortable savings and didn't have to worry about things like I, I worry about not having, you know, like something going wrong all the time. But yeah, I would like savings and for us to, you know, be able to spend time together as a family, like, you know, vacation or whatever it may be, without having to go into debt more to do so.

• 53:56Ramit Sethi?

  So you wanna have more savings and to be able to spend a little bit more travel without worrying. Okay, Shelby?

• 54:04Speaker 02

  I would like all that, plus being together long term, retirement is important as well. And Calvin is a little bit older, so he needs retirement. Cause I'm worried that if you don't have that, then it relies on savings or once I become of retirement age.

• 54:26Ramit Sethi?

  What I'm hearing so far is a wish list. I wanna have money in a savings account and I wanna have money to travel and I want retirement. Great, now what are you willing to do to get it?

• 54:36Speaker 02

  I would like to minimize certain things, like our phone bills.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, cut back on a lot of things and kind of not having those small comforts that we are so used to.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  The things that just kinda eat away at your money without you even realizing.

• 55:00Ramit Sethi?

  Do you think that's gonna do it?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  No, so being aggressive with the debt that we do have. I'm a believer, so like in this season for me, it's like the word uncomfortable is kind of like what I'm sitting in right now. And just being uncomfortable, cause comfort is good, it feels good. It's like, yeah, like I have all my little, you know, creature comforts that I enjoy and, but that thing that will kind of drain everything that you have is just around the corner.

• 55:33Ramit Sethi?

  When you say you're a believer, what does that mean?

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Oh, and, and God.

• 55:36Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so were you raised religious?

• 55:39Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say religious, just I was raised by two grandmothers who took me to church a lot.

• 55:47Ramit Sethi?

  Do you believe God will provide?

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:50Ramit Sethi?

  Got it, common when I speak to folks who are religious, it's tricky when it comes to money.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Because it's been that for me though, like I've had situations where it's like, okay, like I'm looking at my account and I'm just like, okay, things are not going well. And then randomly I'll get a call, you know, from somebody who needs some work done or something. And like, you know, it happened when we first met and I kinda got this job and made, you know, a decent amount of money.

• 56:26Ramit Sethi?

  What happens when God doesn't deliver?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  I don't know, it hasn't happened for me yet. We got chosen to be here. It's not happenstance that it happened, I don't believe in coincidences. We're here for a reason.

• 56:38Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, I agree, we are here for a reason. Shelby, what do you think about this? Are you religious?

• 56:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:44Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, hearing God will provide in this idea?

• 56:47Speaker 02

  It does get a little frustrating to me.

• 56:50Ramit Sethi?

  Because?

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Because I'm more of a like realist based in, you know, what's happening now, not what could happen or what does happen.

• 57:01Ramit Sethi?

  Maybe there's a way to honor both perspectives here. Like we can make room for something really good to happen to us. And at the same time, we can execute on a plan. It's like my mom has this sign in her last house which says, trust in God, but lock your car. We can do both.

• 57:21Ramit Sethi?

  Hearing their story is really painful. And if you truly put yourself in their shoes, it's kind of no surprise that they have ended up in an unhealthy relationship with money. Because if you are in perpetual survival mode, I'm talking about for decades, that's all you know. I'm not surprised that almost everyone in their life has an unhealthy relationship with money. And when that's what you know, that's what you do. So what a gift for me to be able to actually talk to them and share what a healthy relationship with money might look like. That's what I would like to do next.

• 58:00Ramit Sethi?

  Producer told me she's been struggling with sleep. So I asked our sponsor, Lisa, to send her a new mattress. And here's what she said. I've struggled with insomnia for years. Now every night when I get in bed, I'm instantly relaxed and asleep within minutes. The Lisa mattress is somehow soft and supportive at the same time. It's the most comfortable mattress I've ever slept on in my life. That's from our producer. Lisa makes premium beautifully crafted mattresses designed specifically for how you sleep, whether it's on your stomach, side, or back. They make it easy to figure out which mattress is best for you. You just take their two-minute sleep quiz. And Lisa mattresses were named the best hybrid and best memory foam mattresses by the New York Times Wirecutter.

• 58:41Ramit Sethi?

  And they come with free shipping, easy returns, and a 120-night sleep trial. Go to leesa.com for 25% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code RAMEETH, exclusive for my listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code RAMEETH for 25% off mattresses, plus an extra $50 off. And support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. leesa.com promo code RAMEETH. Originally, I asked about trust. From a financial trust perspective, Shelby, do you think it's possible for there to be a future where you trust Calvin?

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's, there's a possibility of it.

• 59:23Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what would you need in order for that?

• 59:25Speaker 02

  I would need to know like what money's going in and out.

• 59:29Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Accurately, not rounded.

• 59:31Ramit Sethi?

  Good, that's one. What else? I can tell you're not used to saying what you would need, right?

• 59:37Speaker 02

  In these circumstances, when I know it's such a soft subject, you know, a sore subject for him.

• 59:43Ramit Sethi?

  Can I, can I make a suggestion? Because I encounter a lot of folks, especially women, who tiptoe around their male partner's feelings. And I get that money can be sensitive for men and women. The people who tiptoe around their partner's feelings often feel that if, if I just say it the right way, if I'm just soft enough, then they will finally come out of this shell and engage with me.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:06Ramit Sethi?

  Feel that, right?

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Oh, totally.

• 1:00:07Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. It never works.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Ramit Sethi?

  That's not how it works. The actual way that change works is for one person in a relationship. Ideally, two, but sometimes it has to be one, to say, these are the standards that I expect. This is what I need. This is what I expect. I'm not going to try to change you. I will help. We can read a book together. We can do therapy together. But this is what I expect. And if not, that's up to you. But here's what I'm going to do. Any of this sound familiar at all?

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  We've set boundaries and such.

• 1:00:45Ramit Sethi?

  Cool. With money?

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Money, no. Money's hard.

• 1:00:48Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, yeah. It's funny, I can talk to couples and they may be, they may have incredible boundaries. They may be really communicative in other parts of life. But with money is this real weird peculiar thing. And actually, what, what I, the reason that I'm here, the reason that I wanted to speak to both of you is to show you that money is just another part of our life. It's not even something we have to sit down and discuss formally. It's as important as, did you feed the baby? So in the same way that you're able to set boundaries in other parts of life and standards, that's what I'm asking you to do here. And I think Calvin, I would invite you to set standards and expectations. And we can discuss what those are today. This is a great place to do that.

• 1:01:31Ramit Sethi?

  And also what happens if one or both of you do not live up to them? Because right now, it just feels really sloppy. Hey, come on, let's try. Can you please send me some information? Let's put it in a jar. It's not getting anywhere. And y'all do not have time to mess around.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm running out of time.

• 1:01:50Ramit Sethi?

  Let's fix it. Okay, this is what we're gonna do. I, in a minute, I'm gonna put your CSP up on screen. I want us to make some big changes. Typically, I like to see fixed costs between 50 to 60%. Y'all are at almost 90%. So we have some changes to make. We need to start saving money every month. Not one-off, not with a bonus. It needs to happen every month automatically. The only way to win with money is the same way you win with health, with learning how to read, riding a bike. You do it all the time consistently. Okay? And then finally, we'll get down to guilt-free spending. Truth is, y'all don't have a lot of money for guilt-free spending right now. That's life.

• 1:02:34Ramit Sethi?

  And what I'm gonna try to do is be really honest with you. This what you can afford to do? Y'all should be able to eat out once, but not once a day. Probably not even once a week. And then y'all tell me what you think. Okay? The key thing, as I put the CSP up on screen now, is that you are going to drive it, not me. Who's the one who drives the finances more in the relationship right now?

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  I drive it verbally, but I feel like in action. You drive it more?

• 1:03:03Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah? Okay, who wants to go first on this one?

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  I will.

• 1:03:07Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Let's take a look at your fixed costs. Your fixed costs are at 89%. You're drowning. So we need to reduce those. And we're gonna start here. Calvin, take it away.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Phone, like our phone bill.

• 1:03:27Ramit Sethi?

  Phone is 150 right now?

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Think we could probably get that. Well, I know we could get that lower.

• 1:03:33Ramit Sethi?

  To what?

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Less than $100.

• 1:03:35Ramit Sethi?

  Shall we say 100?

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, watch what happens to this number up here. This 89%, okay? We're gonna take it from 150 to 100. What just happened to that number?

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Went down.

• 1:03:47Ramit Sethi?

  To what?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  A percent.

• 1:03:48Ramit Sethi?

  It went from 89 to 88%. What does that tell you?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  That's a start, but not enough.

• 1:03:52Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. We're trying to get to 60%. Shelby, you're next.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  I think we can get the phone down more. I used to have it for $37 a month.

• 1:04:02Ramit Sethi?

  Guys, I think we're missing the message here. I'll zero out your cell phone just to show you what I'm talking about. Watch this. Y'all don't have a cell phone anymore, okay? Watch. What happened to this number?

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Ramit Sethi?

  86%. What are you noticing here?

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Focusing on the wrong stuff.

• 1:04:17Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, you're focusing on the wrong stuff. Do you realize how much of this you've done? You're here because I get to show you how to focus on the right stuff. So I'm gonna put it back up to 100. And what are we gonna do next? Shelby?

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  We can take subscriptions down.

• 1:04:34Ramit Sethi?

  Great.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  We could get rid of Netflix.

• 1:04:39Ramit Sethi?

  Do you want to?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  It's one of the things we do at the end of the night sometimes. When the baby goes to sleep, is watch an episode of our favorite show together. So do I want to? No. Do we need to? Yes. We could get rid of things like YouTube and those things. But like certain things, they're not mine. So like YouTube, I can't be like, oh, get rid of YouTube.

• 1:05:00Ramit Sethi?

  Why not?

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Because it's something that he enjoys. And if I'm just taking away everything that he enjoys, I feel terrible.

• 1:05:08Ramit Sethi?

  I guess I would like you to relook at your role in this. I think your role, as you see it right now, is to be nice and to make sure that he's feeling comfortable. And I can't do, I couldn't say that he should stop paying for YouTube. Who am I to say? It's his money. You either both have a joint vision together, or you don't. If it's separate, that's separate. We could, we could work with that, too. I want to jump in here quickly because Shelby told me earlier that they've been working through some trust issues and that she's not sure they're gonna stay together. And that's significant because if they separate, their financial picture is gonna dramatically change.

• 1:05:53Ramit Sethi?

  And I need them to understand that. Listen in. I can tell you right now, if the two of you separate, your financial lives will be catastrophe. Can you imagine what would happen if you two were to separate? Have you thought about the numbers on this? We're talking about going back to government assistance. There is no secret way out of this. The rent right now, your rent is quite low, $1,690.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Ramit Sethi?

  If you split up and each of you got a smaller place, it would be more than $850 a month, right?

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Ramit Sethi?

  So right there, you're already behind. All of this would be way more expensive if you separate. I'm not saying stay together because of the money. I would never say that. The way that I operate planning is I'm gonna assume that the two of you stay together. We have to make some assumption here. And if you don't stay together, then you'll figure that out. But it's gonna be even harder than this is. So what does that imply for the two of you?

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  I wanna work harder to get rid of credit card stuff.

• 1:06:56Ramit Sethi?

  Good. Shelby?

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wanna cut, cut costs where we can.

• 1:07:03Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. What's the energy level right now?

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  It's pretty low.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Pretty low.

• 1:07:07Ramit Sethi?

  It's low as [BLEEP]. What's happening here? I'm trying to raise it up.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Ramit Sethi?

  Y'all cannot get to a healthy level by being like, oh boo, I gotta cut my cell phone $10.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  I think just like, I don't know, just kind of reality sink. Just like, you know, kind of set in.

• 1:07:27Ramit Sethi?

  What is it telling you? What's reality telling you?

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Um, that we're pretty screwed.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Unless we.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Unless, yeah, unless we.

• 1:07:34Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, unless we do something. Are the two of you used to taking big, bold actions?

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  No, fear is a big thing.

• 1:07:46Ramit Sethi?

  Fear of what?

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Failure.

• 1:07:49Ramit Sethi?

  But you are failing.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but catastrophically failing.

• 1:07:53Ramit Sethi?

  That's gonna happen too. It's just a matter of time. It's like, this is very perceptive. You're worried about failing, but you are actually failing a little bit every day.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Ramit Sethi?

  And until we confront that, until we make big, bold action and raise the energy level, we light it up. Then we're gonna sit here fiddling around with freaking cellphone charges and YouTube.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:08:15Ramit Sethi?

  And being delicate, "Oh, I don't know if I should tell him to cut YouTube." No, we're trying to take that energy to a different level. Who do you know that has high energy about money? Nobody, right? You don't know, you all know anybody who has a healthy relationship with money?

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  Healthy?

• 1:08:30Ramit Sethi?

  That tells me, that tells me the answer I need to know right there. Healthy? It's okay to say you don't, that's okay. If you don't have anybody who has a healthy relationship with money, and you don't know anybody personally, then it's no surprise that you have found yourself in an unhealthy relationship with money. So, how do we get out of that? One, we have to envision somebody who has a healthy relationship. If you can't think of somebody, think of a movie. If you can't think of that, use me. Do you think I would go to my wife? "Oh, honey." I don't call her honey, but in this situation. "Honey, do you think maybe YouTube, oh, I couldn't make you stop YouTube? That would be mean." You think I would talk like that?

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:09:12Ramit Sethi?

  What would I say?

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  "We need to cut YouTube."

• 1:09:15Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, and? Go one level up. YouTube, cellphone, Netflix, okay, but what's one level up from that? What's the vision of all of this? Why are we doing it?

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Get aggressive with the debt.

• 1:09:26Ramit Sethi?

  Yes. Get aggressive with the debt.

• 1:09:30Ramit Sethi?

  And, and then, once, what happens after the debt? Because debt is not a rich life vision.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Savings.

• 1:09:35Ramit Sethi?

  Savings, and then what, what does that get us?

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Security?

• 1:09:39Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. Security means what?

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Peace of mind.

• 1:09:42Ramit Sethi?

  Peace of mind. It means that if something happens to one of us, like?

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Losing a job.

• 1:09:48Ramit Sethi?

  Losing a job, school gets delayed, can't find a job, whatever. That, what does it mean for us?

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  Means worse. We're stable at least.

• 1:09:57Ramit Sethi?

  We're stable. We can make it another day.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Ramit Sethi?

  And what happens, by the way, after you're stable? We're stable, we have six months of emergency fund. We feel good, we have secure jobs. Is stable the end? Is that it? We're here on this planet to just be stable? That [bleep] sucks. What's after that?

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Enjoyment.

• 1:10:15Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. What's it look like? Enjoyment means what?

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  Going on more trips and...

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Buying a boat.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  No, we're not buying a boat.

• 1:10:26Ramit Sethi?

  Maybe one day. You could buy a boat.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 1:10:28Ramit Sethi?

  Or you could rent one.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Talking about, you know?

• 1:10:30Ramit Sethi?

  What comes before the boat, though?

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  We like to fish and adventure, so that would probably be like...

• 1:10:38Ramit Sethi?

  Great. You wanna fish more, cool. What else?

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Take out-of-state trips or out-of-country trips.

• 1:10:44Ramit Sethi?

  Yes. What about with the baby? Baby's gonna be older.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Ramit Sethi?

  What do you wanna do with this baby? Or kid?

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  I wanna show him the world if I can.

• 1:10:53Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. Try different foods, play different games, learn different things.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Ramit Sethi?

  This is a much more expansive vision than, "I need you to cut YouTube." Do you see?

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Ramit Sethi?

  If you are constantly only down here talking about, "Do this, cut this, blah, blah, blah." You might be right, you probably do need to cut YouTube, honestly. But like, what are we working towards? We need to have a vision, something that keeps us going. And I suspect that you may not have seen somebody talk like this and think like this. Is that accurate to say?

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. First time for everything, that's why we're here.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so now we have a vision. And it's like, way up here, it might be the boat. It might be like a cool fishing thing, it might be saving for your son's education. Love it. A step down, some restaurants, some trips, et cetera. A step down, stability. And like, today, right now, is what?

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  The first steps. Getting our cost down, paying off debt.

• 1:11:59Ramit Sethi?

  Yes. What, how do we get the cost down? What are the specific things you wanna eliminate?

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Subscriptions, clothes.

• 1:12:04Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, great. Let's do it.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Ramit Sethi?

  So, we're working our way up there by starting with what's right in front of us. Shall we do it? All right, we're trying to get to 60%. Go ahead. Energy's up, speed is up, go ahead. Calvin?

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Aggressively paying off the credit card debt.

• 1:12:19Ramit Sethi?

  How?

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like the $360 that I'm paying for, you know, using, living off my credit card.

• 1:12:29Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  I just need to get rid of it.

• 1:12:32Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, how though? You gotta cut expenses somewhere, right?

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Ramit Sethi?

  Where?

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  I don't know, that's the problem, like, it's...

• 1:12:39Ramit Sethi?

  You don't know because?

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Because it's a, it's a cycle that is, I don't know.

• 1:12:45Ramit Sethi?

  You don't know what steps to take, that's okay. I wanna help you get there. What I'm trying to do is, do we have your expenses up here?

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Ramit Sethi?

  I'm trying to figure out what you want to stop spending money on, so that that money can then go to your credit card debt. What do you see? Read off every line.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Car payment.

• 1:13:05Ramit Sethi?

  That's at $195 for you, correct?

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  That's gas, really. I don't have a car payment.

• 1:13:12Ramit Sethi?

  Anything you can do about that?

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  I recently have been able to use the company gas card to fill, fill up my vehicle, so...

• 1:13:19Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so, does this need to be $195?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:13:23Ramit Sethi?

  What should it be?

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Right now, maybe like 80.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  I think just like, every two weeks, $65 is a conservative amount, because we do take trips to go fish in multiple spots. And I did see 65, you know, go into the tank off of your card. So, you know, if you take that just conservatively, like, every two weeks, that's $130 a month.

• 1:13:49Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so you say it's $130 on gas. What do you say? I like hearing your point of view, Calvin.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  We'll call it, we'll call it 100.

• 1:13:57Ramit Sethi?

  I'm gonna put this number at 130, okay? I'd prefer to estimate high. It's still lower than what it is. 130. I think we need to have a larger discussion about, can y'all afford $130 a month on recreational gas? Maybe, maybe not, but let's put it at 130. We are down to 87%. Shelby, what do you wanna change next?

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  We should lower groceries to probably 600 a month realistically.

• 1:14:20Ramit Sethi?

  Great. 600 a month, okay? And I'm gonna make these proportional. I just wanna show you how much each of you is spending per month.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:29Ramit Sethi?

  Okay? All right, so, if we take a look at the proportionality of this, Shelby, you would pay $534 a month for rent. And Calvin, you would pay $1156, which will take you to $1690. Okay? See how the proportionality works?

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Ramit Sethi?

  Calvin makes more, Calvin pays more for that joint expense. Let's do the same for utilities. Shelby, you'd pay a little bit less, 78, and 169 for Calvin. Same amount you're paying in total, just broken up differently. Let's take a look here at groceries. Let's go ahead and take that number down. So, you're saying, instead of roughly 750 or so, you're gonna take your groceries down to 600? You can do that?

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we...

• 1:15:13Ramit Sethi?

  Great.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  We can do that.

• 1:15:14Ramit Sethi?

  Who's the one who shops for groceries?

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  We do it together and separate.

• 1:15:18Ramit Sethi?

  What, that doesn't sound...

• 1:15:21Ramit Sethi?

  That sounds sloppy.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  It is sloppy.

• 1:15:24Ramit Sethi?

  I don't allow sloppiness when you have this level of debt and this little savings. We can't be sloppy anymore. It could be one person. It could be both of you together, but it can't be all three. Who wants to do groceries?

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  Do you wanna do it on the weekends together?

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  We'll just start doing it together.

• 1:15:39Ramit Sethi?

  Together. One, like Saturdays? Is that it?

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  Saturdays, Sundays, yeah.

• 1:15:46Ramit Sethi?

  Great. Love it. All right, so we got $190 for Shelby, $410 for Calvin. And y'all are shopping once a week. So, you better have their plans ready to go. Good?

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Ramit Sethi?

  And y'all are gonna hold each other to that number, which means $150 per shopping trip. Can you do it?

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:09Ramit Sethi?

  Love it, love that energy. Okay, great. Let's look at baby items. We got 47 for Shelby and 103 for Calvin. All right, y'all are still at 84%, so too high, but at least it's a little bit more equitable. Subscriptions, we're not gonna do this anymore. Cut this [bleep] out for me, please. What's left? We're not gonna like, try to eliminate one by one, we're just gonna say, y'all get one subscription, what's it gonna be?

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  Hulu.

• 1:16:40Ramit Sethi?

  Hulu? That's your choice?

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Let's go with Hulu.

• 1:16:42Ramit Sethi?

  How much is it? 20 bucks?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  I think it's 22.

• 1:16:47Ramit Sethi?

  All right. Child support, who's that for?

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  That's for me.

• 1:16:52Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, that's for you, so...

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  It goes away in November.

• 1:16:56Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, really?

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Possibly.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  My son turns 18.

• 1:17:00Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, great. So, that's, that's money that can possibly be redirected to other stuff. That's really good financial news, okay? School payments, we could drop it to like, 80 bucks, that'll account for summer ballpark. See what I'm doing? I'm spreading out the whole year. And then we have this miscellaneous number. You know what this is? So, at the end of every fixed cost, we automatically add 15%. Most people, when they start earning a bunch of money, they have some unexpected stuff come up that they don't plan for, like, registration for their car every year and stuff like that, right? Something breaks, whatever. If y'all were making like, a ton of money and you, you know, had a bunch of savings, I'll just be like, leave this miscellaneous, it's fine.

• 1:17:42Ramit Sethi?

  But when you have debt and when you are in dire straits, you can't afford this. You have to actually be dialed in on your money. So, I will give you a tiny amount of miscellaneous, because life does get in the way, but you simply do not have the room to be like, "Oops." Like, $611 per month. There's no way. So, we're gonna take this number down to like, 100. I'll make it 150. Let's take a look at the numbers now. What is this fixed cost number?

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  75%.

• 1:18:12Ramit Sethi?

  What do you think?

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  Still too high.

• 1:18:15Ramit Sethi?

  Still too high, better though.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Better, yeah.

• 1:18:17Ramit Sethi?

  Calvin?

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 1:18:19Ramit Sethi?

  What's going through your head right now?

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  It's too high. I'm just thinking of how to...

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Make it even better.

• 1:18:26Ramit Sethi?

  Mm hmm. Good. Well, if we take a look at this, I mean, um, y'all have two or somebody have a car payment here?

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:36Ramit Sethi?

  Yours? When is it over?

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  I have four, four and a half more years.

• 1:18:43Ramit Sethi?

  All right. Can't do anything about that. You have the car now. Can't do something about the gas. Don't drive as much. It's expensive right now.

• 1:18:53Ramit Sethi?

  I feel like nobody in America is like, oh, things are really expensive. I simply should not drive. We're just like, yeah, it sucks.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  We talk about that.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just.

• 1:19:03Ramit Sethi?

  I hate this. Look at my, look at my hand. See this? I hate this. When someone is doing something where they just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I go like this. It drives me insane. Just talking. Shut the up. I hate talking. Take action or don't waste my time.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Ramit Sethi?

  If y'all had like two years of savings, I would still be annoyed. Oh, we talk about it. Oh, I don't want to hear that. I want to hear what you do. So tell me now, reflected in the gas. If you say we've been talking about it and we want to drive less, what number are you going to put there?

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Probably

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  sixty five.

• 1:19:43Ramit Sethi?

  You want to cut it in half?

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. And right now you go fishing every weekend?

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. So that means every other weekend you're not going. What are you gonna do?

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  Walk down to the park.

• 1:19:53Ramit Sethi?

  Love it. So you can fish there?

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Ramit Sethi?

  So what's, what are you talking about? Get rid of that car. Actually, for that matter, do you even need two cars?

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  Yes, we do need two cars.

• 1:20:02Ramit Sethi?

  God, all right, fine. Sixty five dollars down to seventy four percent. Okay, fine. I think we've cut as far as we can reasonably cut.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  We could also cut the fifty dollars for clothes.

• 1:20:12Ramit Sethi?

  Great. Seventy three percent. Okay. I'm okay with this so far. All right, let's just go down to the bottom. Holy

• 1:20:21Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, look at, so now that we made all those changes, all that extra money flowed down to the bottom. And what this tells me is you now have twenty seven percent available for guilt free spending. So usually I like that number to be twenty to thirty five percent. For a couple that, as I described, was in dire financial straits. Should that, should your number be higher or lower than that?

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Lower.

• 1:20:45Ramit Sethi?

  Lower, way lower. So lower than twenty percent because that's like if you were in a healthy financial position. Ballparking, what do you think your percentage should be in your financial situation?

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Ten.

• 1:20:59Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:00Ramit Sethi?

  I would say something like that, eight to ten, especially if you can walk to a park and whatever. Great. All right. So we got money to play with. Meaning this money can be reallocated somewhere.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  Pay off debts.

• 1:21:13Ramit Sethi?

  Good. Your debt is twenty thousand dollars and you're currently paying three hundred sixty dollars a month towards it. Is that right?

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  If you took out the car payments, roughly around seven.

• 1:21:26Ramit Sethi?

  Seven thousand left. Okay, that's fine. And so the seven thousand is what this three hundred and sixty dollars a month is going to.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So those were just bare minimums.

• 1:21:33Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  We both put more than the minimum every month.

• 1:21:38Ramit Sethi?

  How much?

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  I usually.

• 1:21:39Ramit Sethi?

  According to this, you put one thirty five and two twenty five a month. Is that right or wrong?

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  Wrong.

• 1:21:43Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what should it be?

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Four fifty.

• 1:21:47Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, instead of two twenty five?

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, and Shelby?

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  Mine gets paid off by the end of the month usually, so.

• 1:21:56Ramit Sethi?

  Why usually?

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  Sometimes there's like eighty bucks that goes over. I know there shouldn't be.

• 1:22:01Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, there's not going to be. So here's some words that I don't use in my household. Try. I don't try to do anything. I either do it or I don't. Simple. Maybe. Hate that word. Do it or don't. And if I'm not sure, I put it on a list and I'll review that list once a month or during our money session. But like, I hate this uncertainty. When I speak in an uncertain way, then it makes it okay for me to be uncertain and it also affects my wife. She knows when I say something, I'm gonna do it. And if I'm not gonna do it, I will tell her that too. Hey, I'm just not into this. I'm not gonna do it. At least she knows and she does the same for me.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:40Ramit Sethi?

  Could you demand the same of yourselves?

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Ramit Sethi?

  And of each other? Could you, Shelby?

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  I will work on that. I will do it, but it is gonna take some time for me getting comfortable doing that.

• 1:22:51Ramit Sethi?

  So you're saying you find it difficult to be that clear?

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  When it comes to, yeah, because I try to keep the peace.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I am, I'm going to work on that because clearly that's needed.

• 1:23:04Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, good. I love that you're gonna work on it. That's a good way to put it. I'm gonna work on this. Love that. I want you to see that although Calvin has not been forthcoming with things like debt, et cetera. In almost every situation, almost every couple I talked to, they are co-creating the dynamic. And part of the dynamic that you are co-creating is by tiptoeing around and even ending your sentences when you were right. You were right about the gas. But you didn't even end your sentence because you were so like nervous about what's he gonna say? No. You are a part of this relationship. You are mom. You need money to be certain and clear. So you need to speak up with a loud voice.

• 1:23:50Ramit Sethi?

  And y'all might be wrong sometimes. If you're wrong twenty percent of the time, I don't mind. Sort it out, hash it out. But I'd rather you speak up with both of your voices and then work it out. Cool?

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:24:02Ramit Sethi?

  All right. So you'll work on that. Great. I appreciate that, Calvin. Do you appreciate that as well?

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I want the accountability. I want the, the difficult conversations. I want that from her.

• 1:24:12Ramit Sethi?

  Great. This is also an awesome thing to talk about in therapy. All right, how long is it gonna take you to pay the debt off?

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  If we stick to these numbers.

• 1:24:21Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  It should take, what, like seven months?

• 1:24:25Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  At most.

• 1:24:26Ramit Sethi?

  What's the interest rate on this seven thousand dollar loan? Average?

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  Well, the seven thousand's not the loan. The loan is down to forty six.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Forty five.

• 1:24:36Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, forty five hundred. What's the interest rate on that?

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly.

• 1:24:41Ramit Sethi?

  You guys don't know your numbers?

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  I thought it was closer to eleven, eleven percent. No, you had a higher. It's higher. Higher than eleven percent. I don't know where.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Seventeen.

• 1:24:52Ramit Sethi?

  Let's just say twenty percent. I'm gonna do a quick debt payoff calculation. So we have forty five hundred dollars at twenty percent. And then what else?

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  We have the fifteen hundred dollar left on the ring, which is eleven percent.

• 1:25:04Ramit Sethi?

  Let's just make it all the same, just for easy math. Okay, it's gonna work in your favor. So forty five hundred, so six thousand total?

• 1:25:10Speaker 02

  Yes, roughly.

• 1:25:11Ramit Sethi?

  Six thousand at twenty percent. And we are currently paying five hundred and eighty five dollars a month towards it. Okay, we'll find out in a second. In retrospect, what do you think about this ring purchase?

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  I think the ring purchase would have been a good idea if it wasn't for the other loan that I didn't pay back.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  In retrospect, financially speaking, we shouldn't have done that.

• 1:25:35Ramit Sethi?

  You agree, Calvin, or no?

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:38Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. What I'm trying to get at, I'm not trying to like beat anybody up for decisions they made. You made these decisions. Here you are. We're gonna deal with it. Okay? What I'm trying to do is that you both grew up with a lot of financial trauma, like a lot. And when I asked you, who do you know that has a healthy relationship with money? Both of you were dumbfounded. You don't know anybody. Guys, it's gonna take you a lot to build a healthy relationship with money. I am trying to show you with a few specific examples. Like if I had not been able to afford the wedding ring that I bought for my wife cash, then I would have told her. I would have said, look, I love you. I'm gonna be in a position where I can buy a beautiful ring for you right now.

• 1:26:22Ramit Sethi?

  This is what I can do. It's not the ring that I want you to have, but this is the ring that I think is right for us and for the future that we are building together. That level of confidence to be able to be like, look, I'm not gonna lie about it. I'm not where I want to be right now. Is a very different way of interacting with money than what happened. Would you agree?

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  I initially bought a lesser.

• 1:26:43Ramit Sethi?

  And then?

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  And I just, I didn't feel right about it.

• 1:26:47Ramit Sethi?

  That's what I'm trying to correct. Your feelings led you astray. Because that ring is gonna end up costing like double what you paid for it.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:56Ramit Sethi?

  You don't need to be buying multi thousand dollar rings. It's actually okay. If you do it together, if you make a decision jointly, be like, look, we're gonna be able to get that. But right now we have something more important. That's actually how wealthy people talk. And I would like for you to get to the point where you are comfortable with money. Okay. Y'all are gonna pay off your debt in, guess how many months? Anybody wanna guess?

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Go for it.

• 1:27:22Ramit Sethi?

  Six. Okay. Shelby?

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  Eight.

• 1:27:25Ramit Sethi?

  Eleven.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  Eleven.

• 1:27:27Ramit Sethi?

  Eleven months. What do you think about that?

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  It's too long.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  I think it should be sooner than not.

• 1:27:33Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what does it feel like to realize you're paying this debt off for the next year?

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Not good.

• 1:27:39Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  It feels a little frustrating.

• 1:27:43Ramit Sethi?

  What decisions did each of you make that brought you to this point?

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Piss poor decisions. Not paying the loan back, getting the ring.

• 1:27:52Ramit Sethi?

  Yep.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  Using my credit cards. Shelby?

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  I think we've decided to allocate our money to different things rather than towards the debt. So with the APRs and all that, it accrues more and it, it costs us a lot more, so.

• 1:28:09Ramit Sethi?

  And did you decide consciously to allocate? Or did you simply ignore the debt and pay a little bit and then spend the rest of it?

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  I think we did consciously decide on certain things like a road trip or things like that, you know? So making those decisions, knowing that it's only gonna put us in deeper rather than put us ahead.

• 1:28:32Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Calvin?

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Honestly, like just throughout this whole thing today, talking, it's just

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  become evident that like

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  I haven't prioritized the safety and stability of my family.

• 1:28:54Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. I think that's really accurate. Good job. That's really perceptive. I find that people rarely sit down, carefully map out their money and make the wrong decision. It almost never happens. That's not the way it works. They simply ignore what's bad and they

• 1:29:16Ramit Sethi?

  just do the thing that feels good. That's pretty much how humans behave. But we actually can do better. I notice it seems like you have a realization right now. Getting a bit emotional. What's going on for you, Calvin?

• 1:29:31Ramit Sethi?

  Take your time.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  I want all these things for myself and my family. And, you know, I have dreams and

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  stuff like that, but

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  just haven't been making the right decisions.

• 1:29:49Ramit Sethi?

  Keep going. This is big.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  And it has to change.

• 1:29:53Ramit Sethi?

  It's powerful. What I like is that you connected the dreams with the decisions. The dreams happen if you make the right decisions. If not, they just remain dreams or just fantasies. It's all just bull. I can't stand when people come and they talk about all these fantasies they have. And then I look at what they're actually doing and it's just totally different. I go, why are you wasting my time? It's not a fairy tale class. Tell me what you like. You like to fish. I'd like to be able to have you go on an amazing deep sea fishing trip. Okay. But it starts with YouTube. It starts with, are you two actually talking about money? Right now, you're not. I know this is hard. Seeing a grown man cry is not easy.

• 1:30:37Ramit Sethi?

  It actually takes a lot of courage for him to allow himself to do that. But this is important because Calvin is realizing that the identity he has cultivated for himself as a provider

• 1:30:52Ramit Sethi?

  is not actually being matched by the decisions he's making. That is a moment of reckoning where he can start to say, am I not a provider? Am I making bad decisions? And to his credit, he's realizing the decisions he's making are not good ones. That gives me hope that he is listening, that he's ready to potentially make a change. Now I want to see if I can drill it in. I think we made some pretty good progress. You want to keep going and make a few more big changes? Cause we're on the cusp of something here.

• 1:31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Ramit Sethi?

  Can you all feel it?

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Ramit Sethi?

  I could feel it. I could see it. Look, I'll show you. Look at these numbers. It used to be 89% fixed costs. We're down to 76%. And we have more that we can do. Isn't there some bonus coming in conservatively at $5,000?

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Ramit Sethi?

  So we're going to get that in here. That is going to get taxed. So let's just say 3,000.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  Easy math.

• 1:31:51Ramit Sethi?

  So 3,000 divided by 12. We're going to add that here. Here we go. Look at that number. 73%. That's if you get the $5,000 bonus. What would you do with it?

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  We would need to put it towards our debt.

• 1:32:08Ramit Sethi?

  Interesting answer. So usually when people get a one time thing like a bonus or a tax refund, they actually use it to either pay off debt or save, which is not such a bad thing. It's fine. And if you were to use it to pay off your debt in full, I don't mind it. It's not so bad. But what I'm really trying to get you to do is to actually treat your money stably. So you're not taking these one off things and doing random stuff. Cause I bet you if you paid off your debt, the next time you got a bonus, you know what you would use it for, right?

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  What? Your debt that you now accrued.

• 1:32:42Ramit Sethi?

  Yep. Or vacation. Cause you're like, it's free money.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Ramit Sethi?

  You're not respecting it.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47Ramit Sethi?

  Respecting money means when it comes in, you have a plan for it. And right now you all don't need to be doing one off things. You need to be consistent. See what I mean?

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Ramit Sethi?

  That's why I put that money here. Right here, just like the rest of your take home pay. It just flows. That's why this number went down. All right, now let's go and look at the rest of this. You still have 27% in guilt free spending. That's a lot, way too much. We got to reallocate that. Where should the money go?

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  Should go to savings, debt payoffs, investments.

• 1:33:16Ramit Sethi?

  Great. Let's put some towards savings. How much?

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  At least 200.

• 1:33:19Ramit Sethi?

  Keep going. That's way too low.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  500 gets you 6,000 per year, right? So we want more than that.

• 1:33:27Ramit Sethi?

  Finish strong. I want you to really develop your voice. Shelby, go ahead.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  If I was looking at the numbers, I'd probably say at least like 700.

• 1:33:35Ramit Sethi?

  700 a month. What do you say Calvin?

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:39Ramit Sethi?

  Notice the dynamic. What is this dynamic that's emerging over and over again? Shelby, your reaction is?

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  Save.

• 1:33:46Ramit Sethi?

  Save and be aggressive. Calvin, your reaction is?

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Conservative.

• 1:33:51Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, be conservative. Like, I don't know. But guess what happens when you leave money just sitting around in your system?

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  You spend it.

• 1:33:57Ramit Sethi?

  It just gets eaten up. So what's going on in your head is you have this invisible script. Money is meant to be spent. The minute I get it, it's burning a hole in my pocket. And I'm trying to get you to change that relationship. The way you change it is not by telling yourself like, oh, I need to be better. That's just words. The way you change it is literally by saying every single month, our savings account is automatically going to pull $700 a month. You don't have to make the decision anymore. Let's take a look. 700 bucks. That's 10% savings. That's pretty good. You still are at 16% with guilt free spending. That means you still got some money.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Ramit Sethi?

  So shall we take a little bit of that and maybe put it towards the debt? How about like 300 bucks extra per month towards the debt? What do you think?

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  I mean, could we do more?

• 1:34:44Ramit Sethi?

  You could. You could put more towards debt for sure. But I'm worried about your savings account. Because if something happens, you are in really bad trouble. So I actually don't mind if you have to spend 11 months or 12 months paying off your debt, even if you're incurring all this interest. Because I need you to have more savings. I need you to have like thousands. It's $5,000 a month just for you to keep the lights on. So I would actually like to take the extra 300. Forget about the debt. You've got a debt payoff plan. Leave it. Put the 300 towards savings. So now we're at $1,000 a month. This is looking good.

• 1:35:27Ramit Sethi?

  I hope you all are prepared to take your rotten bread and use it to attract fish. Cause no more buying fishing food. That's it. I know that game. We used to fish too. Duck bread. That's why we call it duck bread. We, well, whatever. I don't like it. All right. You all have $835 a month for fun. Can you do it? Who's packing the lunches?

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Me.

• 1:35:49Ramit Sethi?

  Great. And coffee out, is it important to you?

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:35:54Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, it's not. Great. So you're making coffee at home. What's important to you?

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  Like, we want to go to dinner at least a couple of times a month somewhere.

• 1:36:01Ramit Sethi?

  Two times a month. You know the place?

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  Not yet, no.

• 1:36:05Ramit Sethi?

  Here's how people who have to hit a strict number do. They go, we got $835 a month. We want to spend, I don't know, of that $835, 300 bucks for eating out. Want to eat out twice? That's 150 bucks each time. Divide by two, that's $75 per person. We're going to look at the menu before we go and we're going to be very clear with each other. Like, are we getting appetizers? Are we getting a drink? And when you have like 75 bucks per person and you live where you live, maybe you are, maybe not. It depends where you go.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:36Ramit Sethi?

  It's just that specific. But if you want to eat out twice a month, you totally can. I don't know. That feels good to me. It's like we're paying off our debt. We're building up savings at $1,000 a month and we can still eat out twice a month. That's pretty cool. What are you going to do with the rest of the money?

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  We should probably start putting some away for our son.

• 1:36:57Ramit Sethi?

  Don't worry about your son. He has plenty of time. This is a classic thing that people do who are poor money managers. They're in dire straits themselves and they start thinking about their son. Your son needs you two to be

• 1:37:11Ramit Sethi?

  way more financially healthy. And if your son ends up having to take out some debt, so be it. Cause you all need to get your financial act together first. So I would say maybe five, 10 years from now, you will be like so dialed in. You easily could get there, no doubt. That you're like, all right, we got extra money. Where retirement goals are on plan. We hit our six to 12 month emergency fund, XYZ. Let's start putting a little bit away for him. But doing it before then would be a massive mistake.

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  What do we do about retirement?

• 1:37:41Ramit Sethi?

  Good question. You right now have nothing going towards retirement.

• 1:37:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Ramit Sethi?

  Some of this changes once the debt gets paid off. As an example, you currently have $585 a month going towards debt. Once that's done, if it were me, I would immediately shift all of that over to investments. Immediately. I wouldn't miss a month. So when there's, you know, like two months left to go, I'm always making plans. What's going to happen? Two months left to go on the car payment? What are we going to do with that money? That's how you get ahead. And that's how you avoid just like spending money. We got free money. No, we make a plan. You might increase your eating out amount a little bit, but you're going to redirect it.

• 1:38:27Ramit Sethi?

  If you wanted to and you want to take 300 bucks a month right now and cut and direct that to investing, it's not bad. It's not a huge amount, but it's not bad to get that started. I would really like that. And of course you could even make a rule. Anything we make above that $5,000 for commissions, we're going to take 50% of that and invest it. And you all can decide what you want to do with the rest. See what I'm saying?

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 1:38:55Ramit Sethi?

  I'm going to leave this here as is. I want to just summarize what we have done so far. I want to point out a few things that I noticed. Okay? First of all, I want to just take a second and recognize both of you. That was not easy.

• 1:39:10Ramit Sethi?

  Took a lot, right? Think about where we first began with this. We probably spent five, 10 minutes talking about a cell phone. And, and what do you realize now after all the changes we made?

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  It's a drop in the bucket.

• 1:39:20Ramit Sethi?

  It's a drop in the bucket. And we were stuck on this tiny expense, just going da, da, da, da, da, da. And actually we were missing the entire situation. So I want to commend you for that because you picked up on that pretty quick. Second, there's actually a lot of stuff that changes that you could have made and you did. The first part was like really hard. I think you were stuck in the old mindset. And then we created a vision. Hey, we need stability. We need to light a fire, increase the energy here and make changes together. And then you started doing it. What did we do? We reapportioned how the money is being spent. That means the two of you need to be talking about money a lot. Transparency is a default expectation.

• 1:40:04Ramit Sethi?

  So in order for this to work, Calvin, you've got to have the books open. How much you're making. She needs to know everything. And you all need to have the money going back and forth. Since you are not married, I think it's okay for you to have separate accounts. But I do think you should probably have a joint account where you each transfer money in every single month. Okay? We looked at your debt payments. You discovered how long it's going to take for you to actually pay it off. You were both unhappy with that. I like that. I love irritation with money. Because every day you wake up for the next 11 months, you're going to look, you know, open the bathroom, you're going to look in the mirror and you're going to say. Good. After 11 months, you will be done and you will never go back.

• 1:40:50Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, and finally, we made all these other changes. We cut down miscellaneous, we removed all these subscriptions, blah, blah, blah. Turns out you have a lot of money every single month. So we reallocated some of it. Now, I don't love where your fixed costs are at. I'm gonna tell you the truth. 73% makes me super uncomfortable, but I know that you are paying off your debt aggressively. And I know that in 11 months, you're gonna be debt free and have a lot more flexibility. You wanna see what it's gonna look like when you're debt free? Look at this. I'm gonna take this debt and drop it to zero, okay? Watch what happens to the fixed cost number.

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  65%.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 1:41:24Ramit Sethi?

  It went from 73 to 65%. That's massive. Y'all are in a pretty, pretty solid position at 65%. Keep in mind, your commissions can go up. And so if I'm you, I am like dialed in. What do I need to do to hit these commissions? That's what I'm thinking about while I'm at work. Shelby, if I'm you, I'm thinking, can I get another job right now? Is that feasible? Because even an extra $1,000 a month would actually be huge. And also, when I get my full-time role after graduating, that's gonna change the game completely. Y'all could actually be in a very good financial position. Like, your number could be less than 60%, no doubt.

• 1:42:07Ramit Sethi?

  And that means more money to invest, more money to save, even a little bit more money to spend. How's that strike you?

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  It's good. I'm not really worried about spending.

• 1:42:18Ramit Sethi?

  Good. That's a good answer. What's the thing that is important to make this work? That does not show up on the conscious spending plan?

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  Accountability, communication.

• 1:42:32Ramit Sethi?

  That's actually the most important thing,

• 1:42:36Ramit Sethi?

  is the togetherness. And I know that you have a lot of issues to work through. If you have a unified vision of where we wanna go, we wanna attack this debt with unrelenting force. We wanna make sure that we are saving $1,000 a month to our savings. And we wanna make sure that we are like, I own the groceries, you own the lunch making, et cetera, et cetera. If you guys are unified on that, you're actually gonna find that it's much easier to be a team. As for the rest of your relationship, that's for you to decide with the help of a therapist, I hope. But the money part, at least, that can be one source of stability for you.

• 1:43:12Speaker 02

  In November, when that 700 child support comes off, should that all be allocated towards the debt?

• 1:43:21Ramit Sethi?

  Great question. What do you think?

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  I think it would be good. Okay, I think getting it paid off sooner rather than later is better.

• 1:43:28Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. What do you think, Shelby?

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  I think it should be like a 500, 200 split. Like 500 a debt, 200 to just boost the retirement.

• 1:43:40Ramit Sethi?

  You wanna talk about it, make a decision right now? I love a decisive couple.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  We can do it that way. That works.

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  Get open to that.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:48Ramit Sethi?

  You're good?

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Ramit Sethi?

  That was easy. I like that. I like the proposal. I like saying like, hey, here's what I think, you know, here's what I think, and then you both agree. Speaking up, articulating your vision, that's really cool. That's gonna make a big difference. That's gonna help you pay that debt off faster. What are you gonna do once that debt is paid off and now you have more?

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  Invest.

• 1:44:10Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. You can literally put hundreds, if not $1,000 a month, towards investing. You have the money. It's the 700 in child support and the money you were paying towards debt. All of that's gonna be done by the end of the year, roughly. Let's say 12 months from now.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  And we would aggressively put it into his retirement, correct?

• 1:44:32Ramit Sethi?

  No, I don't think it should all go to his retirement because you're both making money and you both need retirement. Like, what if it all goes to his retirement and then y'all end up not being together?

• 1:44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:42Ramit Sethi?

  Not to raise a morbid question, but we need to be practical here. So no, you need to each have your own investment accounts. And if you decide to get married, you know, that's up to you. I probably don't think you need a prenup or a postnup or anything like that, but I would like for both of you to have your own investments. And this is where you have to be willing to say, Calvin, you're older than me. You need to prioritize your investments, which means that, look, we can say like, of your salary, this percentage goes towards retirement, your retirement, but you can't be saving him from himself. Part of what has been missing here is a bit of shielding him

• 1:45:27Ramit Sethi?

  from the consequences of his own financial decisions. So Calvin might spend money and not really pay attention to this, and then you come along with a smile when it's like, there's nothing to smile about here. And you kind of say like, hey, let me like handle this, let me try to handle it. Come on, please, like, share your finances so I can help. That's not the way it works. A better way is what?

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  Being direct.

• 1:45:50Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, and?

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  Setting boundaries.

• 1:45:52Ramit Sethi?

  Exactly. The same way you've done in other parts of life, here. Calvin, how much are you going to need to be putting away every single month in order to have enough for retirement? If you ask Calvin that question today, I guarantee you would not know the answer.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:46:07Ramit Sethi?

  Correct, okay. And that's okay. Most, the vast majority of people do not know. But how would you find out? Is there perhaps a book that was written about this exact topic called I Will Teach You To Be Rich? Exactly. And so the two of you could read it. You could have a little book club, one chapter this person, one chapter that person, and you could figure out what it looks like to unify. That's how you do it. There's also 211. Have you heard of this service? I wanna make you aware of it because it may be something that you can avail yourselves of. 211, a free confidential service that connects people across the US to local community resource specialists who find assistance for essential needs, including housing, food, utilities, healthcare, crisis support.

• 1:46:51Ramit Sethi?

  I mention it because we talked for a second about what would happen if the two of you separate. Financially speaking, you would both be in a really difficult position. Here's my take.

• 1:47:04Ramit Sethi?

  I would rather find out my options now before something bad happens. Cause if something bad happens, I don't wanna have to be like, oh, what do I do? I wanna just like open up the playbook and be like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. With your income, it may turn out that you actually have opportunities for some help with food, stuff for the baby, et cetera. Why not take advantage of it? That's what we all pay taxes for. So I'd like to encourage you to take a look at that and any other resources available. Okay? What surprised you most about our conversation today?

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  The realization that it's a lot worse than I thought.

• 1:47:44Ramit Sethi?

  It's kinda easy to go and ignore the reality of your financial situation, right? What the CSP does, especially with a bit of a trained eye, is like a crystal ball. It just lets you see a few months into the future, a few years.

• 1:48:02Ramit Sethi?

  You could quickly see that if one of you lost any source of income, the game is over. And I don't want you to get to that point. Thanks for acknowledging that. That's, that's a big one. Shelby, what surprised you?

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  I thought I was coming to you with, you know, wanting to talk about finances all the time in a way that was benefiting us. But I don't think I've been doing it in a way where it actually has been doing anything positive for our situation.

• 1:48:35Ramit Sethi?

  What do you think you've been doing?

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  I think I tiptoe and instead of actually taking action, I allow it to just kind of, you know, whittle away at whatever, but it doesn't get us anywhere.

• 1:48:50Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, nice. That's a powerful realization, too. You know, my wish for you is for you to begin seeing yourselves as a power couple. I don't say that to every couple. I don't know, there's some clue that I can sense from the two of you where, you know, there were times where you said like, we talk about stuff and I was like, oh, God. But there were also times where I saw that you could become decisive. And when I see that little hint, I go, oh, there's something there. A power couple can be a couple that is united.

• 1:49:23Ramit Sethi?

  That understands each other, that makes it a point to communicate regularly. That disagrees sometimes, I don't mind that, fine. They talk about it over and over, they don't give up. They try one way, it doesn't work, they try another way. That's a power couple. And also, they have their money dialed in. They are not sloppy. Power couples know exactly. You ask them, what's your savings rate? They know. Who's the one who empties the dishwasher? They know. So that's my wish for you.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  Got some work to do.

• 1:49:55Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. The one other thing that I see for you is I see lots of positive things happening over the next one, two, and three years. Do you know what they are?

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  Once we get out of debt, we can create savings, we can create stability, security, and retirement, so extra security.

• 1:50:18Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:20Ramit Sethi?

  What else?

• 1:50:21Speaker 02

  We can do more things with our son and family and create, you know, memories and...

• 1:50:27Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. Calvin, what do you see coming up? One, two, three years, when it comes to your finances?

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  Not having to worry about debt.

• 1:50:38Ramit Sethi?

  Cause it will be paid off?

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:40Ramit Sethi?

  Yes?

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  And knowing that my family's good.

• 1:50:47Ramit Sethi?

  What, specifically, here's what I see. The debt's gonna be paid off in 11 months, maybe sooner. Child support payments end in about a year, maybe sooner. We have a potential $5,000 or more bonus at the end of the year. Then we have Shelby, your potential income increasing, that'll be a couple of years from now. We have savings of $1,000, starting this month. That means a year from now, you're gonna have $12,000 in savings, plus what you already have. This is a lot of really positive steps. I think maybe you haven't internalized it yet. Because it's just like, we're living like, oh, we're paying these random bills and da, da, da, da.

• 1:51:31Ramit Sethi?

  That's because you have so much chaos around when it comes to the money. But when I look at just the simple numbers, I'm like, $700 a month about to open up soon. The credit card debt and the other debt's about to be paid off. Then the income increase, then the bonus, then the this, then the that. It all really starts to change your financial trajectory. I think you're in a potentially better spot than you think. If, what? What's the most important thing?

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  Follow through.

• 1:51:58Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. And is it just one of you doing it?

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  No. Both of us.

• 1:52:02Ramit Sethi?

  This fails if you don't both do it. That's the most important, is a healthy relationship. You have that and follow through? Y'all are good. What do I think will happen with Shelby and Calvin? I think that financially speaking, if they were to execute the plan as we outlined, they can actually be in very good shape in a few years. They're gonna have more income, their expenses are gonna go down, they can allocate that money accordingly. They actually have a bit of time. Realistically, I think it will be very hard for them to execute at a flawless level.

• 1:52:45Ramit Sethi?

  I think that there's instability in their relationship. And when you grow up without healthy role models, it's almost like you're operating with one arm tied behind your back. So could they do it? Yeah, I believe in them. Will it be harder for them than other couples? Yes. There is no magic wand when you are operating starting late in life and without a very high income. We ran some simple calculations. If they contribute about $785 a month until Calvin turns 65, the amount they will have for retirement is just over half a million dollars. That's not enough. That is definitely not enough.

• 1:53:29Ramit Sethi?

  And at that stage, they would be living in poverty. Could they make changes? Of course. Her earnings are gonna go up, I hope his earnings go up. They could get aggressive about how much they are investing and saving. There are things they could do, they have cards to play, and they do have time. But they would need to be on it. And they can't be talking about things, they need to be taking decisive action right now. My wish for Shelby and Calvin is that they create a bold, powerful vision of who they wanna be. As partners, as parents, as individuals. Something that is special, something that is aspirational,

• 1:54:09Ramit Sethi?

  something that is not them worrying about bills for the rest of their lives. And then when they do that, and they have that identity they want, to get the help that's going to allow them to live it. And now, let's check out their follow-ups.

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone. It's our first follow-up since our conversation with Remy. And we were just talking about our biggest surprise from the conversation, and that was just the manageability of getting our debt down and what it takes. He laid it out really simply for us.

• 1:54:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, with putting it in perspective of 11 months, that is something that is very obtainable, and it is not as bad as, you know, we initially thought it would have been.

• 1:54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're hoping we can crush it in less than 11 months if we really...

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  Really get on our game.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  Um, one of our biggest takeaways was just, well, for me, it was that I'm not trustworthy with finances. It really made me look at it in a different way and kind of see it from her perspective and understand that things need to change in order to, yeah, have that trust gain back.

• 1:55:30Speaker 02

  I think a big takeaway for me was the fact that I was partially communicating, but just stopping the sentence a lot of the times to kind of appease, you know, you. And I think, you know, as Remy pointed out, I should just be confident in what I'm saying. And I think if we plan to have more money meetings on a regular basis and continue like an open line of communication about what we're spending, so focusing on transparency, I think we'll meet our goals a lot quicker.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And since then, we've been really focusing on making sure that we are tight to the budget, groceries and, you know, fun money and any extra spending. We're really tracking and making sure that we're accounting for what's going out.

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've definitely been crushing groceries. We do weekly trips now together, and we stick to our $600 a month.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, trying to get it a little bit lower than that.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, we would love to get like 500 if we could, but we don't wanna push it. And then, oh, our fun money, we write it down and we subtract every creature comfort every day from it. And, you know, once it's out, that's it for the month. So that's been helping a lot.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  And really keeping, keeping to the script. And, yeah, just trying to plug away at it and make things happen.

• 1:57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, we wanna thank you so much for taking the time to help us. We really appreciate it.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an awesome opportunity. And, yeah, like you said, we really appreciate it and, you know, look forward to our growth.

• 1:57:21Speaker 02

  Definitely. I'm excited to see where it takes us.

• 1:57:24Ramit Sethi?

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