196. “He used to help me with debt…Now he’s making it worse”

Frank (29) and Jill (33) are parents of two young kids and are trapped in a vicious cycle of overspending and debt. With fixed costs eating up 107% of their income and $25,000 in credit card debt, they’ve been repeatedly digging themselves into a hole—and scrambling to climb back out. Frank solves panic with credit card balance transfers. Jill struggles with emotional spending rooted in childhood. Their lack of communication and alignment has created a wedge in their marriage, making it hard to face their financial reality together. Can Frank and Jill cut spending, break old habits, and build a stable financial future for their family—or will they let the weight of their debt pull them down? This episode is brought to you by: NordVPN | Secure your online privacy with NordVPN’s special offer. Get a huge discount on a 2-year plan, plus 4 bonus months free, when you sign up at https://nordvpn.com/ramit. Superhuman | Get a free month of lightning-fast email at https://superhuman.com/ramit. ZocDoc | Download the ZocDoc app for FREE at https://zocdoc.com/ramit then find and book a top-rated doctor today. LMNT | Right now, LMNT is offering 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. This is a great way to try all 8 flavors. Get yours at https://drinklmnt.com/RAMIT. Fabric by Gerber Life | Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/ramit. Links mentioned in this episode • I’m looking for couples to work with on my podcast in 2025; please apply at iwt.com/apply • Order my new book: Money for Couples Connect with Ramit • Get Money Coaching with Ramit • 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 If you and your partner have a money issue and you want my help, I occasionally select a couple to work with, free of charge. Apply for my help here. Produced by Crate Media.

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

• 0:01Ramit Sethi?

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• 1:26Ramit Sethi?

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• 2:38Ramit Sethi?

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• 2:47Speaker 01

  Our mentality is always like, it's just me and him. And if we just put enough stuff around us, then we'll be all right. We'll be able to function and it's not true.

• 2:57Ramit Sethi?

  Meet Frank and Jill.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Groceries have quadrupled since the start of our debt.

• 3:02Ramit Sethi?

  Frank is 29, Jill is 33. They're married with two young children and they are stuck in a vicious cycle of overspending and credit card debt.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  I'm angry at this cycle. I'm angry at myself. I'm angry that we can't be aligned. I'm frustrated.

• 3:19Ramit Sethi?

  Frank and Jill both struggle with the money messages they grew up with.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  I was taught by my mother that the credit cards are the devil. And if you get them, they are going to ruin your life.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  We'd ask like, oh, can we have this cereal? And she'd be like, no, we don't have a coupon for that. And so it was just constantly like, no.

• 3:36Ramit Sethi?

  They tell themselves stories that prevent them from taking responsibility for their poor spending habits.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  My rich life is not driving a Ferrari. I want to be able to just relax and go places and go hang out with the kids and not fear poverty.

• 3:52Ramit Sethi?

  And their inability to talk about money has driven a massive wedge in their relationship.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  I felt like he's checked out. Like even when I asked, hey, can you figure out what your retirement is? It was like. I don't care. And to me, I'm like, don't you understand? Like, that's what we're working towards.

• 4:10Ramit Sethi?

  If things don't change soon, they might face some major consequences.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  The biggest fear is we're going to be bankrupt and all of the fears that we have been fueling are going to be reality.

• 4:22Ramit Sethi?

  Can they ditch their old money habits and start working towards building their rich life?

• 4:28Speaker 02

  We need to stop doing these things to us and we need to come together and make time for each other and make time for our money.

• 4:35Ramit Sethi?

  Now, let's meet Frank and Jill.

• 4:44Ramit Sethi?

  I'm about to open Frank and Jill's Conscious Spending Plan, which breaks down their net worth, income, and exactly where they spend. You can download and create your own Conscious Spending Plan, or CSP, using my free template at iwt.com/csp.

• 5:05Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, Jill and Frank, they write, "We both want to live a rich life, but we continue to block ourselves from making sustained changes. We are back in debt again after our second child. We're trying to get out of debt before our credit cards go high interest next August." She says, "I always want to plan and think ahead, so I often bring up money conversations, but I end up chasing him and nagging him for things to happen. We struggle with overspending, me out of emotions and him out of resentment and emotions. He never spends anything and I always end up making the purchase for the kids and the household." This is a very common dynamic. Let's take a look at their CSP. Assets: $341,000. Investments: $27,000.

• 5:49Ramit Sethi?

  Savings: $42, not $4,200, $42 in savings. And debt is $449,000. Total net worth of negative $80,000. Okay, before I go on, I should point out that it's often that people have a negative net worth, especially early on in their lives. That is when you factor in things like student loans or other types of debt. But what is obviously an Immediately concerning is the fact that we have anyone with only forty-two dollars in savings, but especially young parents. If I saw this in my own life, I would stop everything and I would focus on this. This is a red alert. It is a ten out of ten emergency. Let's keep going along.

• 6:32Ramit Sethi?

  Gross monthly income is about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year. Okay, nice. Fixed costs at a hundred and seven percent. Okay, right there is the ballgame. They are broke. They are spending more than they make every single month just on fixed costs alone. So this is it. Right here, we know why they feel stressed. We know why they are fighting about money, avoiding money, using words like chasing and nagging. It's right here. Let's break down what's going on in this fixed costs. Housing costs are not crazy. They're at about twenty-one percent or so. Got a car payment of seven hundred fifty dollars, nothing crazy as well. Let's see what else. Whoa, debt payments at one thousand five hundred and seventy-one dollars a month.

• 7:16Ramit Sethi?

  That's a big deal, okay? And then groceries at fifteen hundred dollars a month. It's difficult when you have two of those things. Let's look at investments. They're predictably, they're at zero. Savings are, what the hell? Savings are at five percent, but that five percent is three hundred dollars a month for Christmas? And then guilt-free spending says negative twelve percent. I don't believe that. I believe they're probably eating out, probably spending on a bunch of discretionary stuff. I almost guarantee that they are spending a ton of money on kids' stuff. People who are in debt, especially credit card debt, it's almost one hundred percent correlation being in credit card debt and an inability to say no to kids.

• 7:58Ramit Sethi?

  So there's a lot going on here, but I'm actually really excited to get a chance to speak to them. I think that we can make some big, big changes with their spending and probably zoom out and really help them think about money in a different way. So looking forward to talking to them.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  We have big problems to attack here. The biggest fear is we're going to be bankrupt and all of the fears that we have been fueling are going to be reality. We've tried to get ourselves out of this process three times and we're back here again. We don't have the tools. There's something deeper here. We need like a behavioral change and I've seen your podcasts and your videos and I'm like, okay, this might be the person who can like help us get to that space that we're trying to hide from.

• 8:48Ramit Sethi?

  And if I could wave a magic wand right now, what would I do for you?

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Showing us the mirror, right? Like how we're both playing a role in this because it's two of us. It's not just him. It's not just me. It's both of us.

• 9:01Ramit Sethi?

  What do you say, Frank? If I could wave a magic wand, what would you want me to do for you?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  That question's tough for me because like the magic wand is just obviously just erase our debt and be done with this. But what does that do for me ultimately? I want to just go do it again. You know, like I want to learn how to stop going into debt, how to stop these compulsive behaviors of just, oh, it's 50 bucks. Oh, it's 20 bucks, you know? I want to stop getting myself into more and more problems. The one thing I want to take away from here is, is hope. I want hope that there is something that we can do to problem solve. And I want there to be just this like motivation that we can find to just get out of this. What feels like a forever ending hole, like a tunnel that's just slanted downwards.

• 9:42Ramit Sethi?

  How would you describe your financial situation today?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Our financial situation to me is credit card debt in this economy with two kids is tough. You know, you felt like you'd get ahead, but then you don't because clothes, kids, school, you know, everything is just getting expensive and more and more each day. And so our financial situation is right now, we're just bearing through these first five years while childcare is like 1,500 bucks a month. So we're just like grinning this out because we're just going down just enough every month in the red.

• 10:15Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Jill, how about you? How would you describe your financial situation?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I feel like it's self inflicted. I think the childcare is a piece of it. If we could just hone in our like impulse control and like the wants, I think we would be fine. To me, I think it's a communication and being on the same page thing and being proactive versus reactive and being conscious and able to make decisions together. And to me, that's where the problem is, is that we just can't be on the same page ever, or it's an argument, or the other person's like, okay, whatever, just do whatever.

• 10:49Ramit Sethi?

  So I'm hearing a few different things. I'm hearing your financial situation is self-inflicted, which is kind of contradicting what Frank said about clothes are getting expensive, childcare is getting expensive, groceries are getting expensive. And I'm hearing communication is an issue. You don't really talk about money, or if you do, it's quick, it's fly by night, it's disagreements or fights, one person retreats. Do the two of you have a shared vision of money?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I mean, we started your program and we realized a lot of the things we want for the future are very similar, but we never had had that conversation before, so we really never knew that.

• 11:25Ramit Sethi?

  That's good. Which program? Are we talking about my book or my money coaching program? What are we talking about?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  The online money coaching program.

• 11:32Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, okay. And what happened when you finished the program?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  We sure didn't.

• 11:36Ramit Sethi?

  Really? What happened?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  The same cycle that we always have.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Fear. We get scared. We don't want to look at the reality.

• 11:42Ramit Sethi?

  So you go through the videos. Did you attend one of the calls?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:47Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, cool. What did it feel like when the two of you were on the live call?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Fear.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  I got hope.

• 11:53Ramit Sethi?

  Hope?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:55Ramit Sethi?

  Fear, shame, and hope. Interesting. Were the two of you sitting together?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  We couldn't.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  We have to divide and conquer with the kids.

• 12:02Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. How old are the kids?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Seven months and four years.

• 12:06Ramit Sethi?

  Wow. Okay. All right. So you're really in it. Young kids. Okay. Did you talk about the money coaching after you attended the session?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  We did, yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  We're hearing all these things about how people can live your rich life, how to be somebody that is enjoying your own current financial situation as opposed to someone who's driving a Ferrari. Like, I don't want that. I want to be able to just relax and go places and go hang out with the kids and not fear poverty. I want to be able to enjoy the small things. Just being able to eat out and not look at the bank account. That's what I want to do.

• 12:39Ramit Sethi?

  What does it take in order for you to do that?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Get our finances together in such a way that I don't have to question that the money's not there.

• 12:46Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. But then I'm confused because you all didn't finish step two of the program.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 12:52Ramit Sethi?

  Why?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Got busy, as we say.

• 12:56Ramit Sethi?

  As we say, we didn't have time. Is that a phrase you use a lot?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 13:01Ramit Sethi?

  Is that true? Do you not have time?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  It feels like it. Between kids and work, it just seems like we're running around like crazy people. We're like, our one son has autism, our other son's seven months old, so between daycare and work, you know, we barely cross paths until it's Saturday or Sunday.

• 13:18Ramit Sethi?

  How long would you say that this disconnection of time between the two of you has been going on for?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Ten months.

• 13:25Ramit Sethi?

  Since the baby came, the second one?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  No, no, for eleven years.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Wow, different.

• 13:33Ramit Sethi?

  Huh?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Come on, it's been the entirety of our relationship.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  As far as the disconnect of the time, I mean, we've always avoided the conversations, but now that we're trying to come at the conversations, I feel like more times than not, we're struggling to get the time.

• 13:48Ramit Sethi?

  Jill, if I asked you, what is your rich life, what would you say to me?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  For me to be able to spend time with the kids and my husband and to, you know, have shared memories and build memories with the kids and be able to take care of our health, to just be able to live through the day and not be stressed and on edge because our finances are in my mind all the time, not being where I want to be, not being able to have those conversations. I have tried to figure out ways to come at conversations and I always feel like it's not successful.

• 14:25Ramit Sethi?

  Do you remember what my question was?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  What's my rich life?

• 14:28Ramit Sethi?

  And do you see where we just ended up?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Me feeling like I can't have a rich life with my husband.

• 14:35Ramit Sethi?

  I would say you talking about your problems versus painting a picture for me of your rich life. What I can hear from both of you is a really narrow vision of where you are today. So much so that when I ask, what is your rich life? Within thirty seconds, we're back to why you can't live your rich life.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:56Ramit Sethi?

  Frank, do you see that pattern as well?

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:59Ramit Sethi?

  Do you both believe that there is a future where? You can answer a question like the one I just gave you with a positive.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  When you asked the question earlier about like, how did you guys feel after you went on like the monthly call? We both felt like, oh, look, people do do it. People have done it. And so the conversations to me was like, oh, like, we can do this.

• 15:22Ramit Sethi?

  Well, I appreciate that. And that's one of the things I love is being able to expose and show you other people who've gone through tough times and made it. So, good. Okay, it sounds like you two conceptually believe that there's a future that can be brighter than today.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 15:37Ramit Sethi?

  Perfect. You've got to believe that. Let me understand a little bit more about day-to-day lifestyle. Jill, what do you do?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  I'm a therapist. I own my own private practice.

• 15:47Ramit Sethi?

  Cool. All right, Frank?

• 15:49Speaker 02

  I work from home. I work in IT.

• 15:51Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, great. All right, let's talk about the finances. If you had to describe how you feel about your finances in one or two words, what would be the words?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Busy.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Like a hamster wheel.

• 16:02Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Have you ever felt calm about your money in the 11 years you've been together?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Yep. I used to be the sole income where for a while when she was going to school. And so I had no debt. I just had to worry about affording the next thing. And that was calm. Even though it was, I now realize, looking back, I had it good then. I was like, oh, God, what am I gonna do?

• 16:23Ramit Sethi?

  So you're a worrier. So it's interesting that, you know, you worried back when you were even calm. You were worrying. Now you're worrying more. You're going into debt more. And you mentioned to me, if I had a magic wand, you would have me wave it, pay off the debt. But even if your debt was paid off, would you stop worrying?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 16:41Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Something deeper than the amount on the spreadsheet, right? Do you notice that when I ask questions around how they talk about money, Frank uses the phrases, "we're too busy," or "we can't find the time." Now, remember, they're parents with young children. And it makes a lot of sense. They are incredibly busy. It's also a story that we commonly tell ourselves. We are too busy to do X. And we find that the results show up, for example, with their finances. I'm not here to tell anybody how to run their time or even how to run their money. But once you get comfortable with the story that we are too busy.

• 17:25Ramit Sethi?

  Suddenly it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. In fact, it's easy to dismiss most parts of managing your money. As Frank just mentioned a moment ago, he's been a worrier since before they had debt. So there's a lot to unpack around his relationship with money. Let's listen in as he talks about the money messages he heard as a child.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  I grew up in a house where money was like, you didn't have it. And if you did have it, it was spent ridiculous. You know, bills are not getting paid, but you go order $90 on pizza. As a kid, you're like, oh, young pizza. As an adult, that's a poor choice.

• 18:02Ramit Sethi?

  You grew up poor?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  I would say middle class with self destructive behaviors.

• 18:07Ramit Sethi?

  Very interesting. Where, what part of the country did you grow up in?

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Uh, Clemson, Ohio.

• 18:10Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. What do you remember your parents saying about money when you were a kid?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  We don't have any.

• 18:16Ramit Sethi?

  What else?

• 18:16Speaker 02

  We got some, let's go spend it.

• 18:18Ramit Sethi?

  And they spend it on family stuff like pizza or anything else?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Pizza, toys, adventures. We would go like tubing down the creeks, you know, we would go to camp and eat and out, stuff like that.

• 18:30Ramit Sethi?

  And then what happened when you didn't have money again? What would they say to you?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  There's no money. Can't go do those things. We gotta wait till the next check.

• 18:36Ramit Sethi?

  Do you ever see your parents talking about saving or investing?

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I didn't even know what stocks were. I heard of like people investing. Of course, you know, you've watched movies, but you're like, how do you even approach that?

• 18:46Ramit Sethi?

  When you look back at your childhood, what lessons do you take away about money?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Save it. I know that kind of contradicts what I just said, but save it. That's the lesson I took away. Save it all. Don't spend anything.

• 19:00Ramit Sethi?

  That's a little contradictory based on how much you're spending right now, right?

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Yep. I, when the kids came along, it was like a brain switch for me. I was like, well, they need it. I have to give it.

• 19:11Ramit Sethi?

  Wait, doesn't this sound like you just switched right into your parents?

• 19:14Speaker 02

  I don't want them to know, oh, we can't afford it. I tell my son, you know, you gotta, you gotta save up for that. I'm trying to teach him lessons that I need to teach myself. You know, I'm trying to say like, we only have five bucks. He goes, picks out an $8 toy and I'm like, ooh, the budget's fine for this one.

• 19:28Ramit Sethi?

  You can get away with this for about a year and a half more. And then. And then they get too smart. They know what's going on. Dad's over here telling me one thing and doing completely the opposite. Kids are really smart. You better find a new line. That's not going to last much longer.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, have to get creative.

• 19:44Ramit Sethi?

  What do you think will happen when your son starts to point out how you're saying one thing and doing another? How are you going to react to that?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  And you know, I'm gonna feel horrible. Like, Dad, we don't have it, but you can go do that?

• 19:55Ramit Sethi?

  Very interesting response. You're going to feel horrible, not, I'm going to make a change right now, so that he never has to point out that I'm saying one thing and doing another. What do you get out of that? Out of saying, I'm gonna feel horrible, instead of talking about what you are going to change behaviorally?

• 20:14Speaker 02

  I have this path in my mind that it's not changing.

• 20:17Ramit Sethi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Sounds like I'm looking in the future and I see no change.

• 20:21Ramit Sethi?

  It seems to me, I agree. You believe your future is already determined, and therefore, when you look at your future, which is a future you don't like, the only natural conclusion is, I'm gonna feel horrible. Can I tell you, I look at it differently? I look at your future as unwritten. Of course, you have some clothing that you are wearing. It came from your childhood. These are messages you picked up. These are lessons you learned consciously and unconsciously. So yes, you're bringing those with you, but the next chapter of your life is not written yet. And I believe I have control. I have agency over what is going to happen to me next. Do you think that way or not?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  I think I can learn to think that way. I think I can change and do something different. That's why we're here. I wanted to come here.

• 21:01Ramit Sethi?

  I'm glad you're here, and I appreciate you showing up and going full force with me and with your wife. Okay, so you grew up, not a lot of messages about positive saving, investing, a lot of, we can't afford it. Now, I'm curious about you, Jill. What do you remember about the phrases your family, your parents used when you were growing up as it relates to money?

• 21:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I grew up poor, so the phrases were usually that we don't have it, or we can't have it. We'd go to the thrift store for clothes. When we'd go to the grocery store, my grandma would always like go down every single aisle. And then she'd have her coupons and so she'd whip out every single coupon. And I remember like we'd ask like, oh, can we have this cereal? Like all of our friends have this cereal, can we have this one? And she'd be like, no, we don't have a coupon for that. And so it was just constantly like, no.

• 21:51Ramit Sethi?

  You mentioned your grandma.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  My mom has mental health issues, so my grandparents raised me, I think, after like two or three.

• 21:59Ramit Sethi?

  Got it. Wow. I'm sorry to hear that. And did that lead to you getting into the world of therapy?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  It did, yes.

• 22:07Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  It was a rough, rough childhood, but my grandma was a big proponent of like getting services. So, you know, even though like we were poor, she made sure like we had the state insurance and went to therapist and saw people. And she always made sure we went to the doctors and dentists. So health was like really important to her. We were poor, but we didn't need anything. We just wanted stuff.

• 22:32Ramit Sethi?

  Of course, every kid wants stuff.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:35Ramit Sethi?

  So you grew up, a lot of talk about we can't afford it. And did that same type of conversation continue throughout your teenage years?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It changed. You know, I would say probably in elementary, my grandpa started talking to me. Like my grandpa was the, the financial guy. So he would be always sitting on the porch, reading a finance book. Like he would always talk about the investments he was doing. So there was three of us, my sister and my brother, that they took care of. And I'm the youngest. So he always would talk to me about like, hey, these are the books. This is where I keep all of your guys' stocks. And when I started working, he was like, you gotta put back, you know, your 30% for savings. And I just, no, I, I didn't want to hear any of it. To me, it was like. I finally had my own money to do all of the wants that I was always told I couldn't do.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I wanted a cellphone when I was in my teens and they were not going to pay for a cellphone. So I had to buy my own cellphone. You know, I wanted extra clothes more than what they were going to be able to afford. And so then I would purchase those extra clothes. So it bred this concept of like extra money, when in reality, like that was the money that I needed to be preparing myself for life with. And he was constantly telling me that, but I just was like in one ear and out the other. It wasn't until we got out of debt, like the second time where I was like, oh, like this is what he meant. This is why this is so important. I'm getting older and I don't have any savings. I don't have any retirement.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  And I'm like, man, all of that extra money that I was using for like things that I wanted, that I didn't need. I could have had all these savings because my needs were met with my grandparents, they're just like the ones. And so that's exactly how I spend as an adult. And that's the, the challenge I have is the telling myself, no, you do not need that. You have your needs met. That's my issue.

• 24:34Ramit Sethi?

  Is that the challenge you currently have as well?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  I still fight it.

• 24:38Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  I mean, there's, I go through periods of time where I'm like, I'm on it. This is my plan. I want a retirement. I want to not work my whole life. And then literally like, I'll just be like, oh, but I really want that.

• 24:51Ramit Sethi?

  Feel like a battle, like you're fighting a battle with yourself?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  It does. It literally feels like my adult self is fighting my child self. Like I'm trying to like, tell the child self, like dude, like I know you want that, but like you really, the time is running out. Like you've got to get yourself together. And then the child self is like, mm, I hear you, but I really don't care. Like, let's just get this one thing.

• 25:15Ramit Sethi?

  That's powerful, how Jill admits that. Her grandparents provided for her and tried to teach her to save. But because the message she internalized was you can't have that. She struggles to manage her impulse control. It's like driving a car. Her grandparents only taught her how to hit the brakes. And that has turned into all or nothing for Jill.

• 25:41Ramit Sethi?

  Earlier, we heard Frank describe the money habits that he picked up from his parents and is now passing on to his own kids. There's a lot at play here, but I will say even the very situation they are in gives them the opportunity to rewrite their story. Let me tell you what I mean. They're the parents of young children. That's incredibly stressful, overwhelming. Of course, you're busy. Maybe true, but what if we rewrote that story to say, yes, we might be a little overwhelmed. Of course, we're going to be busier than we ever thought, and we get to make amazing changes and to build a healthy relationship with money that will be passed down for generations

• 26:26Ramit Sethi?

  to come. We'll be right back after this short break. One of the most helpful things that I've started using in the last year or so is meeting notes that automatically tell me what the next action steps are. Clear notes really matter. They are so easy, and that is why I recommend this episode's sponsor, Granola. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. Using it is easy. You take your typical rough notes during a call, and in the background, Granola uses your device's audio to turn your messy bullet points into clean, structured, actionable insights. It's great because there's no setup, there's no awkward bots showing up to the call.

• 27:08Ramit Sethi?

  My colleague told me what I love about Granola is that I can stay focused on the conversation instead of scrambling to capture every detail. And if I forget something, Granola got it with the action items ready to go. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free. Just head to granola.ai/ramit. That's granola.ai/ramit to get your time back. Try it for free at granola.ai/ramit. Let's take a look at your to-do list. How many things are on there that you've been putting off for nine months or more? I'm talking about important stuff like booking doctor's appointments and getting your estate plan in order.

• 27:52Ramit Sethi?

  We can knock them out in about an hour. You can get your estate plan handled today, for example, with help from Trust and Will. Trust and Will offers affordable attorney-designed estate plans online that you can create in as little as 30 minutes. Everything is state-specific, it's tailored to your needs regardless of what stage of life you're in. And we actually had one of my coworkers create a will using Trust and Will. Here's what she said. "Getting started was incredibly easy. In less than an hour, I had a will, power of attorney, last will and testament, and HIPAA authorizations, all of which I downloaded, and if I wanted, I could have them checked by another attorney." Their platform makes it easy to keep these things organized and updated, so your loved ones don't have to manage tons of paperwork down the line.

• 28:37Ramit Sethi?

  Now, you can use an attorney for your estate plan, but that's not an option for everyone. If you know that you have loved ones that you need to protect, Trust and Will is worth considering. Go to trustandwill.com/ramit to get 20% off. That's trustandwill.com/ramit to get 20% off. T-R-U-S-T-A-N-D-W-I-L-L.com/ramit. Let's get back to the conversation. You said that you got out of debt for the second time. Can you walk me through the number of times you've gotten into and out of debt?

• 29:18Speaker 01

  So, while my grandfather gave great lessons on retirement and savings, he did not talk about credit cards with me. He didn't talk about how to use them, how to manage them, none of them. So, I was already under this misconception of like, extra money. So, when I got my first credit card, I was like, "Oh, I have this extra money I can use? Oh, this is great. I'm gonna just spend it. And, oh, I only have to pay this small amount monthly. I can afford that." Then that was the slippery slope of me just, "Oh, I don't have it right now, but I'm gonna get paid. Let me just swipe my card." Over and over and over again, like through my college years, Starbucks coffee.

• 30:02Ramit Sethi?

  How much debt did you get into?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Oh, God, the first time, I think it was $12,000.

• 30:07Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Did you pay it off?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 30:11Ramit Sethi?

  How did you do that?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  My husband said, "I'm not gonna marry you until you get this debt paid off."

• 30:16Ramit Sethi?

  About Frank?

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yes, we're talking about Frank.

• 30:18Ramit Sethi?

  What? Okay, I have to say that surprises me. Frank, that's, I love the boundaries. I love that. I love any partner who says, look, this is what I need in order to be in a healthy relationship. I'm not trying to change you, but I'm telling you what I need. Frank, that's pretty cool. Where did that come from for you?

• 30:39Speaker 02

  It came from a very, very disciplined man who would not spend any of his money unless he had it. I was taught by my mother that the credit cards are the devil, and if you get them, they are going to ruin your life. And so I didn't own one. I didn't want one and the debt associated with them.

• 30:57Ramit Sethi?

  So Jill, what was your reaction when he said that?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll take care of it. Don't. Hold my french fries.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  That's, that's all it takes because we were like, I think, six years in at that, five years in maybe or?

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, we waited all.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  At the time.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Wow, yeah.

• 31:12Ramit Sethi?

  That's kind of interesting. You waited five years to talk about that?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Sad. She was still going through college and hadn't entered the workforce. I was working full time.

• 31:23Ramit Sethi?

  All right, so, so he said, I would like you to pay that debt off, otherwise we're not going to get married. And Jill, you were like, cool, say no more. How long did it take you to pay that debt off?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  A couple of years.

• 31:33Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, three, three years.

• 31:35Ramit Sethi?

  Was it hard?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was hard.

• 31:37Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, and, and looking back, do you feel proud?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, I celebrated when we got out of debt that first time.

• 31:45Ramit Sethi?

  Wow. So you get out of debt, y'all get married. When was the second time you got into debt?

• 31:50Speaker 02

  It was when we lived next to a earth fair, which is like Whole Foods. And my wife grew up being told no on a lot of the food choices that she wanted. And, uh, credit card later, I turn around and look and I was blindsided by some severe debt. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 32:07Ramit Sethi?

  Hold on. How much is severe debt?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  I think it was like fourteen thousand.

• 32:12Ramit Sethi?

  What are you buying, like Frosted Flakes or something? The same stuff your grandma told you you can't buy? You're like, I'm gonna buy it now? What is it?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  I would handle pretty much all the stuff for the house. I would go grocery shopping, get the household goods, all those things. Because he would go to the grocery store and get like the cheapest stuff. And I'd be like, I don't want this cheap stuff. And then he'd get upset and say, why? We don't have the money for it. And I would say, but we do. And then he was like, well, then you just go grocery shopping. I don't care. I wanted the pristine health. So everything was organic, everything was grass fed. Everything was like the best of the best. So, but it was not.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  It was outrageous to come home with a brown bag. I'm like, it couldn't have been that bad. You're like, it was $400. I'm like, it fits in a bag? A brown bag? And it's 400 bucks? What's in there, gold?

• 32:59Ramit Sethi?

  It sounds like the way you brought it up would be kinda jokey. Was it a joke or were you mad?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  I was very mad. I didn't know that it was going on a credit card. I didn't know the true cost of these items. In the moment, I'd be like, oh, this is good. This is great. Oh, this tastes great. This is nice. How much was this? Okay, wow, that's outrageous.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  At the time, it was like, how could you do this again?

• 33:20Ramit Sethi?

  So you got into personal debt, buying groceries for both of you?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:24Ramit Sethi?

  Alright, so Frank finds out and then what happened with that debt?

• 33:27Speaker 02

  I got upset and I said, I am going to fix this right now. You are gonna give me your credit cards. I'm gonna take you down to a federal credit union. You're going to get yourself on a payment plan with a personal loan. And you're gonna pay this off and you're gonna hand me the cards.

• 33:40Ramit Sethi?

  What is this guy? It's not Frank. It's like Federico. Federico comes out, just freaking gangster. Suave. He goes, this is how it's gonna be. You wanna get married to me, Federico? You're gonna pay off your debt. $14,000 debt? Let's go. We're going to the credit union. We're gonna take care of business. Where did this come from? The second time?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Wait till we get to the third time.

• 34:03Ramit Sethi?

  Hold on, Federico. Let me take it step by step, okay? I know you like to run around here. Alright. So you go to the credit union, you put the payment plan in place and what happens? It gets paid off? What'd you do at the end when you paid it off?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Celebrated again.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  We went out to dinner.

• 34:17Ramit Sethi?

  High five, good job, love you, celebrate. Okay.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:20Ramit Sethi?

  Are we in the middle of the third time right now?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  We're in deep.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  There's a caveat here, though.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Because after that last time, I was like, I'm sick of this cycle. I want to get ahead of this. And I went spreadsheet happy. And I was like, we have to figure out where our money's going. And at that point, I had broken the trust enough, I guess. And he didn't care. He wasn't trying to have the conversation. I was chasing him for months.

• 34:45Ramit Sethi?

  Even though the debt had been paid off, why were you out of it, Frank?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  I was so sick of having the mindset of, we don't have it, we don't have it. I got jealous. I was like, well, we don't have it. Why are you spending it? And I'm not. I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna go buy a computer then. If I were gonna rack up debt, I'm gonna do something for myself once in a while.

• 35:06Ramit Sethi?

  Whoa. I just have to jump in here because this is a heartbreaking comment from Frank. It's heavy, but I'm also not surprised to hear it. The thing is, when one person in a relationship is the money person, or even the enforcer, as Frank or his alter ego, Frederico, was, and the other person's just content to be along for the ride, that can often breed resentment. You do not want to be in a relationship where there's a parent-child dynamic. It is bad in so many ways. And in this case, that resentment led to Frank basically throwing in the towel, saying, why bother?

• 35:48Ramit Sethi?

  Why do you get to buy whatever you want and I have to be the bad guy? This is one more example why it is so crucial for both people in a relationship to have an active role in managing the family finances. There can never be one money person, because this is an example of what happens when there is. I talk more about this in my new book, Money for Couples. So what do you think about this decision looking back?

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Screwed up royally. I should have had conversations and kept the mindset firm. You don't have it, you don't spend it.

• 36:26Ramit Sethi?

  What happened on the third time? Tell me what you buy and then we'll get into the numbers.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  It's so much at this point. I don't even remember, but I just know there's between electronics and children and household furniture. We bought a house because it was pre, it was, I think it was during COVID. The market was just going insane and I was looking at all these forecasts and I was like, did we buy a house this month? Or we're screwed. We did. And then the market went off the roof and our house like went up a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in value.

• 36:57Ramit Sethi?

  Where'd you get the down payment? Where'd you get the money to furnish the house and maintain it? Where'd you get all that?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Credit cards.

• 37:03Ramit Sethi?

  Oh.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Welcome to the debt.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Then we had, we had our son, our one year old at the time and he was in childcare. So childcare was an expense. So as we were putting our money towards that, we were also like, well, we need a couch. Oh, we need a table. Oh, we need a bookshelf. Oh, we need clothes. Go ahead and get the, get the computer that you want. Cause you're already four thousand dollars in debt. What's an extra five?

• 37:27Ramit Sethi?

  How much are you in debt today?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Card debt, F of mil, a loan, I think is twenty five thousand.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Loans too.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Auto loan is twenty five, home is two twenty, student loans, what are they?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  A hundred and sixty or a hundred and forty.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  We looked at it one day and we're like, oh no, oh no. What, what do we do? How do I problem solve? How do I logically get rid of this? How do I solve it like the last two times? And I'm like panicking. I just don't have a good solution. The economy, groceries have quadrupled since the start of our debt to now. Everything's gone up. Childcare used to be seven hundred bucks a month. It's fifteen hundred today. I don't know what to do. Eventually we're gonna run out. Our debt was maxed out. Our cards were maxed. That's when we realized. We did something wrong.

• 38:18Ramit Sethi?

  You didn't realize that before the cards were maxed out?

• 38:21Speaker 02

  No, we were like, we have to spend this money. We don't have a choice. We have to do it. You know, it's, it's, it's what we have to do to keep it going. Keep the cycle, keep the lights on, keep getting the kids in school and keep paying for clothes and, and food. Ask us if we spent anything extravagant in the last year, I'd say no. We have been pretty good, I think, about trying to make sure the things that we need are, are needs, not wants.

• 38:46Ramit Sethi?

  What's in your house right now? What's the most expensive thing in there?

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 38:49Ramit Sethi?

  Usually it's a car.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Okay, so the car, yeah, obviously.

• 38:53Ramit Sethi?

  How much is that?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  It's a, a van, twenty five thousand.

• 38:56Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what's next?

• 38:58Speaker 02

  The other car, which is nine thousand. We got computers that are probably our next big items.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  The furniture?

• 39:05Ramit Sethi?

  What's the most expensive piece of furniture?

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Our bed.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:09Ramit Sethi?

  How much?

• 39:10Speaker 02

  It was twenty five hundred for the base and then three thousand for the mattress.

• 39:14Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, um, so you all have a more expensive bed than I do. Okay, what's next after the mattress, the five thousand, five hundred dollar mattress and bed? What's next?

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Solid wood Amish table.

• 39:26Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  And then a three thousand dollar couch. We bought a, you know, like a fancy Roomba for like a thousand dollars. I bought a monitor for my computer gaming and, and working and I bought, it's like a thousand dollars. And I, I think that was in the cycle of just panic buying all the things that we wanted.

• 39:43Ramit Sethi?

  Can I, um, make an observation?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:46Ramit Sethi?

  Frank, you said we haven't spent on a lot of extravagant stuff. I think you have, particularly for your income. The bed alone, not to mention the table, the multiple computers and on and on and on. That is extravagant.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Our mentality is always like, it's just me and him. So we have to figure out how do we make me and him work well enough to keep our day to day going. And so we're like, okay, oh, if we have a better monitor, then we're going to be working faster. If we have a Roomba that cleans the floor, then we won't have to mop the floor so often because we're so stressed. If we just put enough stuff around us, then we'll be all right. We'll be able to function, and it's not true.

• 40:26Ramit Sethi?

  This is the most Americana of stories. We don't communicate effectively about money. We don't even spend a lot of time together. We tell ourselves the story that we're doing it all for our kids, but we lie to our kids. We tell them, save money. We don't save money. Meanwhile, we're increasingly in debt. We're busy. We start to concoct stories. Well, we need this because of that. Let's buy this. It'll make us feel better. We then tell ourselves another layer of story, which is we're not actually buying anything extravagant. It's all necessary. We're investing in our time and ourselves. And you end up where?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, in debt.

• 41:03Ramit Sethi?

  In debt, disconnected, feeling behind, stressed out, bad health.

• 41:10Ramit Sethi?

  Here we are. Now, what happens if you keep going?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  The biggest fear is we're going to be bankrupt and all of the fears that we have been fueling are going to be reality.

• 41:21Ramit Sethi?

  You're going to be bankrupt. Do you know when?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  We're, we're already in the-

• 41:25Speaker 02

  All the interest rates of the credit cards go on full strong next year.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're already in the red.

• 41:30Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, you have artificially low interest rates right now?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  We balance, part of my panic problem solving was I balanced transfer to 0% interest cards for a year so that we would have some time to pay things down and just keep slapping as much extra income as we could. That's what we're doing to fix it right this second. And I'm taking on more household stuff. My wife is taking on more hours at work. We're trying to get ahead.

• 41:51Ramit Sethi?

  Frank, what role has your panic played in contributing to this financial problem?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  I get so overwhelmed and so anxious about it that I just push it to the next day. You know, there's a tightness in my chest all the time.

• 42:03Ramit Sethi?

  Now imagine you bring that panic, that manic energy towards money. What ends up happening?

• 42:12Speaker 02

  We gotta balance transfer. We gotta do this. We gotta buy this. We gotta do this. Don't tell this. We gotta fix this. We'll figure it out. I don't know what to do. I gotta go to sleep. We'll figure it out tomorrow.

• 42:18Ramit Sethi?

  Not calm, cool, and collected. Frenzied, panicked, making every short-term decision you can. Jill, you recognize this pattern that I'm describing?

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bring it up all the time. I wish we could just have a calm conversation. I just want to sit down and just talk about it, but it doesn't have to be anything more than just a conversation.

• 42:41Ramit Sethi?

  Now, you are a therapist. Have you two gone to therapy together?

• 42:44Speaker 02

  We have in the past.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:46Ramit Sethi?

  Was that helpful?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  It was at the time.

• 42:49Ramit Sethi?

  And how come you haven't gone back to talk about money?

• 42:52Speaker 02

  You think that was the thing you could do?

• 42:54Ramit Sethi?

  What do you mean? There's a whole financial therapy industry. There's even therapists who can just help you talk about connecting.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  I try to have these conversations with him. He just shuts me down.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  I didn't know there's therapy for money.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  He tells me not to talk about the expertise I have. He doesn't care about it. He doesn't want to hear it. I'm sorry.

• 43:14Ramit Sethi?

  It's gotta be tough.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard. I feel like I try to look at things from the, like, a big picture. And I mean, I still have my issues. I have my anxious and all those things, but like, there's a lot of times before it got to this level that I tried to say, hey, something's not right. We need to sit down and look at this. And it was just like, it's fine. It's fine. It's in the green. It's in the green, whatever. It's fine. I'll just put money towards it. Or, you know, it was just constantly pushing me away from the conversation and it was hard. I felt really alone.

• 43:49Ramit Sethi?

  Do you feel that way today?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  He's gotten better, but I still feel like there's days where he's just, sometimes it feels like he's in his head having all these conversations with himself and I'm just on the outside, kind of like, hey, I'm here. And sometimes it's like, I'm, I'm talking to him and I'm looking for feedback or I'm looking for engagement and he just says, uh huh, or tries to walk away and it's been hard. And I've talked about therapy. I brought it up multiple times and he shot me down. I don't know how else to approach it to be heard, so then I give up. And I say, well, I'm not gonna do this financial thing on my own. I'm not gonna penny pinch on my own. And so I'm just like, who cares? Let's spend it on the credit card. I don't care anymore.

• 44:32Ramit Sethi?

  Are you both at that point where you both just don't care anymore?

• 44:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  I care a lot.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  I care now a lot. Yeah, I got really scared when we we saw that that big number. And it was double what we had ever gotten ourselves out of before. I got scared and I started to halt drastically.

• 44:48Ramit Sethi?

  First two times you got into debt, it was Jill. And then the third time, it seems like the roles are reversed. Am I reading that correctly?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  I feel like I still played a role in it. For me, it was like, I don't care anymore because we're not gonna have the conversation. And I feel like maybe his was, I didn't get my opportunity. Now here's my time.

• 45:05Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, fair enough. I appreciate that. So both played a part in debt number three.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  We're both guilty.

• 45:11Ramit Sethi?

  So why don't you all just keep going?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  I never wanted to keep at this rate. I've never wanted this to be in this state.

• 45:19Ramit Sethi?

  Well, you are here.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we are here.

• 45:21Ramit Sethi?

  So why don't you just keep going?

• 45:23Speaker 02

  We've been telling each other, we want to have generational wealth for our kids.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  I don't care so much about generational wealth. I feel like we've had a really hard life. And I would like to just be able to spend quality time together and to spend it with the kids and watch our kids grow up and actually be present. I want to be home with them. I want to spend quality time. I feel like I'm missing the time I have when I'm healthy enough to be with my kids. So for me, that's, that's what I want. And I'm angry. I'm angry at this cycle. I'm angry at myself. I'm angry that we can't be aligned. I'm frustrated.

• 45:59Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, I hear that. You both hear that you're not aligned about why you want to make a change right now. Like generational wealth, talking about it at twenty nine

• 46:10Ramit Sethi?

  versus Jill's like, we got our whole lives ahead of us. The two of us, the four of us.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  It's the anxious, it's the wearying. What is gonna happen at the end?

• 46:19Ramit Sethi?

  I think what I'm hearing from you, Frank, is I believe I've lost the game for myself. If you've lost the game, then Jill's simply gonna be running uphill for the rest of her life alone. Because you're checked out. Do you believe that you've lost the game for yourself and it's over?

• 46:33Speaker 02

  No, I I think if I can fix my mistakes and change my behaviors, I could turn this around. I feel like the problems that I have, I have to handle those myself. You know, yes, we do make choices together, but sometimes she leans on me to make a choice and I make it and it's not a good choice. And I have to change that so that we can have a better future.

• 46:52Ramit Sethi?

  Jill, how you doing over there?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  That hurts. Like, that's, like, that hurts to hear.

• 46:58Ramit Sethi?

  Why?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Because that's how it feels. Like, that's how it's felt. And I didn't know why it felt that way. It didn't make sense. I've felt alone. I felt like he's checked out. I felt like he's written it in the sand. And that there is no tomorrow. Why are we even planning it? Like, even when I asked, hey, can you figure out what your retirement is? It was like, I don't care. And, and to me, I'm like, don't you understand? Like, that's what we're working towards. Like, that's why we're working so hard. If he already feels like his life is over, then yeah, why would he be trying?

• 47:34Ramit Sethi?

  I'm trying to think about how this has got to feel for you, Jill. Like, in a way, it's like, oh, I finally understand why he's acting that way. But also, oh, my God, is my husband at 29 years old checked out?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  To me, I'm like, there's so much to live for. Like, we have these two beautiful kids. Like, all of it kind of just hit me like a brick wall. Like, well, if he doesn't care to be here with me in this, then of course, he's not going to care about how he parents, or how he cares about how he treats the marriage, or how he wants to spend time with me. Of course, he wouldn't want to spend time with me if he doesn't care. He's done. There's nothing here anymore.

• 48:12Ramit Sethi?

  Sometimes it's surprising, kind of things that we hear on this show. Hearing Jill say she doesn't think her husband cares anymore is incredibly devastating. But since she's repeatedly asked Frank to engage, and he has shut her out, I completely understand what she's saying. That would be painful for any of us. Of course, this points to something so much deeper than strictly their finances. This is why I always encourage my guests to speak to a therapist. But this is also a classic example of how a crack in the foundation can bleed into so many parts of life, including money. It's very easy to get to a place like this,

• 48:58Ramit Sethi?

  especially with young kids at home, including one with special needs, and an increasingly disconnected view of money.

• 49:08Ramit Sethi?

  It doesn't have to be like this. Yes, they're at a crossroads here, but I think they can make changes that will help them correct course. If they are going to get aligned, they have to do it together. This disjointed way of everybody going to their own corner is not going to work. We will dig in after a quick pause to support our sponsors. It's kind of interesting how people react differently to caffeine. Some people get super jittery with coffee. Some people prefer tea. I've found it to be really fun to try to test different sources of caffeine and find what works for me. Sometimes it's a black coffee. Sometimes it's matcha. And there's a new way for you to try out a different source of caffeine, one that will not cause you to have a massive energy crash.

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• 50:45Ramit Sethi?

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• 52:07Ramit Sethi?

  Now, back to the show. Let's see if I can help Jill and Frank find a way to work together as a team. Do you all want to talk to each other right now? I feel like this is a really important moment for the two of you.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely feel like I care. I care more than I show. I tend to be reclusive in my behaviors. I tend to handle and fix things by myself.

• 52:28Ramit Sethi?

  Frank, listen, you're not listening to your wife. You're definitely not listening to me. What did she say?

• 52:34Speaker 02

  She says he feels like I'm checked out.

• 52:35Ramit Sethi?

  She's not asking for you to give a 10-minute exposition on why you do this and that. What do you think she's looking for right now?

• 52:42Speaker 02

  An apology.

• 52:43Ramit Sethi?

  How about just accepting what she said and validating her? Wow, I can see why you feel that way. That's gonna be so tough to feel alone. I am sorry.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  I am, I am sorry. And it does, it does hurt to see that you feel the way you're feeling. And I don't want you to feel that way. And I want you to feel loved and I want our kids to be happy.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  I hear him apologizing and I still don't know if he understands what he's apologizing for.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Apologize for making you feel alone throughout this whole time, making you do it all by yourself and not being a part of the solution.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 53:18Ramit Sethi?

  A lot to work through here. Some of it is not my specialty. I would like to talk about the numbers. I would like to talk about the money and we'll talk about how that's affecting the two of you. How's that sound?

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Good.

• 53:32Ramit Sethi?

  I want to take a look at your numbers because we've just spent quite a bit of emotional energy talking about some pretty deep stuff, stuff that definitely needs to be explored in therapy. Let's take a look at the numbers, which will help ground us and see where you are today. Jill, why don't you go ahead and read the word in bold and then the number in full next to it and just work your way down.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Assets are $341,109. Investments is $27,554. Savings is $42 and debt is $449,000 for a total net worth of negative $80,861.

• 54:13Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, just so everybody hears those numbers correctly, we have savings of $42.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:19Ramit Sethi?

  That's the full amount and then debt of $449,565. All right. What do y'all think about these numbers?

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Not good. Yeah, I want the savings to be up so we have emergency funds and I want our investments to get to the point where we're investing money so we can retire.

• 54:36Ramit Sethi?

  Jill, how about you?

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I want to invest more. I want to save more. I want to get the debt paid off. I would like to see a positive total net worth. That'd be wonderful.

• 54:47Ramit Sethi?

  Do you all see the connection between your behavior with money over the last 11 years and the net worth numbers?

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 54:58Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, let's go down to income. This time, let's hear from Frank. Frank, what is the combined current monthly income?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  $10,613.

• 55:08Ramit Sethi?

  All right, $10.6K per month gross, which is gross income of $127,351 per year. Did you both know that's how much your household makes?

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:21Ramit Sethi?

  Wow, good. Okay, great. Now, we're gonna work our way down the CSP, going through the four key numbers. What is this fixed cost number right here?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  A hundred and seven percent.

• 55:32Ramit Sethi?

  Your fixed costs are a hundred and seven percent of your net pay. So that's it. That's the end. You're broke.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, this has been the conversation I've been having, is that we're not okay.

• 55:43Ramit Sethi?

  Hundred and seven percent means you're spending more than you make just on fixed costs every month alone. All right, let's just finish off, and then we'll come back and do the line ends. Investments are at zero. You're putting zero dollars away. Is there any 401K or pre-tax money going away?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Not currently. There was in the past.

• 56:01Ramit Sethi?

  All right, so zero dollars going there. Savings, almost zero, but it looks like you all put three hundred dollars a month away for Christmas. Am I reading that correctly?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no. That was three hundred dollars, flat.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Oops.

• 56:13Ramit Sethi?

  Like, for this year, it's coming up. How much will you spend?

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Three hundred, yeah.

• 56:18Ramit Sethi?

  All right, and then the last one. Guilt-free spending says negative twelve percent. I know that's not true, because when was the last time you all ate out?

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Monday.

• 56:25Ramit Sethi?

  Out of curiosity, where'd you eat?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Firehouse subs.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, how much total?

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Everything, including delivery. I think it was sixty bucks.

• 56:33Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. I mean, according to CSP, you spend negative seven hundred eighty-three dollars a month. How can that be?

• 56:40Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't know.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  We spend more than that.

• 56:43Ramit Sethi?

  I know you do. The answer is it's going on your credit cards.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  No, it's owner draws, and we're paying it with cash card.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, the income on that sheet is her base salary. She makes more, but she keeps it in the business. So that income is not accurate.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  It doesn't.

• 56:58Ramit Sethi?

  What's with all these technicalities? All right, maybe you're not putting it on a credit card, but in the end, are you, are your credit card balances going up? Yes. Are you spending more at all on your credit cards right now?

• 57:09Speaker 01

  No, no, we're not doing that.

• 57:10Ramit Sethi?

  You put them away?

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  We are trying our best to, every single chance we get, to throw all the money at it.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:18Ramit Sethi?

  I need to understand more about how you make money, Jill. You're a therapist. You get paid per session?

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm on salary, so I pay myself. And then it fluctuates based off of people canceling or whatever, then I'll do owner draws.

• 57:35Ramit Sethi?

  You run your own business, is that correct?

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:37Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so can, can we just look at this? Which salary are you? Are you the higher or the lower salary?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  The lower salary.

• 57:44Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, forty-seven, thirty-seven a month.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:46Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so you're paying yourself fifty six thousand dollars a year in base salary?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:51Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, cool. And then how much on average do you take in salary draws or any anything else?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  It's between two to four thousand additional each month.

• 57:59Ramit Sethi?

  What? That's a lot.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It's only been since the past two months because I increased my hours a lot.

• 58:05Ramit Sethi?

  In order to make more money?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:07Ramit Sethi?

  And is this part of why you feel like you're you're not spending as much time with your kids and you're resentful of that?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  I used to have everything built in, so I had time for my husband and time for the kids, and that's all gone.

• 58:21Ramit Sethi?

  Can we make the change right here and just see what happens?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 58:24Ramit Sethi?

  So like, you're actually taking home, if we're gonna be conservative, let's just say you're taking home two thousand extra per month. Watch what happens to this fixed cost number, okay? This percentage that currently says one hundred and seven percent. Watch what happens when I increase your take-home pay. What'd that number drop to?

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Eighty-five.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:42Ramit Sethi?

  From one hundred and seven to eighty-five percent. What do y'all think about that?

• 58:46Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  I mean, that's why that's why I took on the the hours.

• 58:49Ramit Sethi?

  Before we go line by line, do you all know why I recommend fifty to sixty percent for fixed costs?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  To live a rich life?

• 58:58Ramit Sethi?

  So your fixed costs are fixed. Every month, you pretty much spend this amount. And if you wake up in the morning and you've already got sixty percent of your money going somewhere, you still have forty percent of it that can be distributed among savings, investments, and guilt-free spending. But let's say you wake up and in the morning, you got eighty-five percent of your entire month's money already claimed by your fixed cost. What does that mean?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  And I'll live with fifteen percent.

• 59:29Ramit Sethi?

  Yes. And what usually happens when people have to live with a very small amount?

• 59:34Speaker 02

  They explode out because they're so.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, explode.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  They're just wanting something more.

• 59:38Ramit Sethi?

  You want more because you feel scarce, which is correct, especially the way you were both raised with money. You go, I don't want this feeling again. I'm gonna just spend money. You run up the credit card. But also notice what's happening here. People who only have a little bit of money after their fixed costs claim up the majority, they don't save or invest any money. And they remain. Stuck in this cycle because they cannot escape. The only way you escape your fixed costs is to invest and save aggressively. You will never escape, otherwise you'll be doing this for the rest of your life.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of the conversations that I wanted to start having is the ability to start saving and investing. So we're not constantly, like I said earlier, the hamster wheel.

• 1:00:18Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, you're on the hamster wheel because your fixed costs are at 85%. No wonder you're stressed out, no wonder you're fighting, no wonder you're avoiding each other and not talking about money. And can't even connect enough to fill out a spreadsheet, knowing you're going to be here talking to me. It's that you have no money left over and yet you're still going out to eat and still doing those things, knowing deep down, oh my God, we probably should not be doing this.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:40Ramit Sethi?

  You have trapped yourselves.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:43Ramit Sethi?

  We'll finish reviewing their conscious spending plan after this.

• 1:00:48Ramit Sethi?

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• 1:02:00Ramit Sethi?

  Now back to Frank and Jill's conscious spending plan and their fixed costs. Let's go through them line by line. Your mortgage is not bad. It's 17%. That's quite low. So you got a very low total payment relative to your income. That's great. Your car payment is $750, a little high for my taste, but okay. Not bad. It's fine.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  That's gas too. I didn't know where we should put the gas.

• 1:02:24Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, that's good. That's how it should be. Good job.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:02:26Ramit Sethi?

  Um, your debt payments are $1,571. And we know that's not the true number because your credit cards are about to kick in, right?

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Well, the extra money that she owner draws, we try to put it all towards the debt payment.

• 1:02:38Ramit Sethi?

  Well, that can't be. You told me you just went to firehouse subs or whatever and got a $60 meal. Come on, let's get real. What are we talking about here?

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  The just.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  We really put a portion of it towards the.

• 1:02:48Ramit Sethi?

  How much portion? What percent?

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  50%.

• 1:02:51Ramit Sethi?

  You're telling me you put $1,000 a month towards your debt? Extra.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were at 32. We're down in two months to 24 now.

• 1:03:00Ramit Sethi?

  Oh.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  We're trying.

• 1:03:01Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, I stand corrected. I apologize. That's impressive. Tell me the numbers again.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  We started at 32 and then she's killing it. And I'm taking on other stuff in the house and we're trying to just do as much as we possibly can. And now we're down to 25?

• 1:03:17Ramit Sethi?

  32 to 25 in two months?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's been a long two months.

• 1:03:22Ramit Sethi?

  Whoa, hold on. Damn. Take the win. That's impressive. So you put effort towards this debt. You prioritized it. You did it together and you're getting amazing results. This is promising. All right, let's get, let's get back to it. My eyes are open. So again, you have $1,571 in debt payments, but you are putting at least $1,000 extra towards it every month.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:48Ramit Sethi?

  Whoa, that's on top of 1,571.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  I think we put like a thousand one check and then a thousand the next check. Um, we went down hard on this credit card.

• 1:03:56Ramit Sethi?

  Love it. Let's keep moving. Groceries at $1,500 a month. What's that?

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  We have allergy kids that are allergic to milks and stuff. So we have to buy specialty foods for the kids.

• 1:04:09Ramit Sethi?

  Fair enough. Y'all have to shop very consciously for your kids. I get that. It's probably going to be more expensive regardless. I get that.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Ramit Sethi?

  You all ever say no to your kids?

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Ramit Sethi?

  Like for what?

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  He wants everything in the store and I say, no, just pick two.

• 1:04:23Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. What about like pick zero?

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  No, I can't. I feel horrible.

• 1:04:29Ramit Sethi?

  What are you teaching your kids when you do that, especially your older one?

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  Get what he wants. Let me go to the store.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:36Ramit Sethi?

  And what's gonna happen as he gets older and he gets his first job and starts spending money? What's he gonna do?

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Get what he wants.

• 1:04:43Ramit Sethi?

  Mm-hmm. What's gonna happen when he has kids?

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  They're gonna get what they want.

• 1:04:46Ramit Sethi?

  No is love.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:48Ramit Sethi?

  Can be delivered lovingly. It can be delivered with a great lesson. Sometimes it can just be delivered with one syllable, no. But I will tell you that 100% of the couples I speak to in credit card debt struggle to say no to their kids.

• 1:05:04Ramit Sethi?

  You two are a statistic. I love being a statistic. It means I'm like most people in most things. Amazing. If I'm like most people in most things, that means I could probably use advice that most other people use in most things. If you two are like every other couple I've spoken to in credit card debt who struggles to say no to their kids, how do you take that? And what might you do with that information?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Say no. You gotta have boundaries.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Gotta fix the behavior.

• 1:05:27Ramit Sethi?

  Whose behavior?

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Our behavior.

• 1:05:29Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, so you're saying fix your behavior first. Model it. Go through the same thing your kid is going through. Learn how to modulate and talk and communicate about that. And then when you go to your kids, it's gonna be that much easier because you yourself have regulated yourself. What's that sigh?

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Hope.

• 1:05:50Ramit Sethi?

  It is? I never heard someone give a sigh of hope like that.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  It's relief. I didn't think the way that you're thinking these things out for us.

• 1:05:57Ramit Sethi?

  Okay.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  I don't think like this.

• 1:05:59Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, cool. I appreciate that you're receiving this well. That's awesome. That's as much as I could have hoped for. Fantastic. Let's keep going. I have a question about your mortgage. Does that include your property taxes and?

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:10Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, it does. Great. And maintenance? What about stuff you gotta fix in your house? Where's that?

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  We had a home warranty that you just paid and it'd come and fix your stuff. We just canceled this last month and we're gonna take all the money that we would have used for that and put it into a savings account.

• 1:06:24Ramit Sethi?

  Come, I don't see that in your savings.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  We tested this like two days ago. I didn't think consciously to update this file because I was like, what does it matter? But now I'm thinking, if I change something, I need to update the numbers.

• 1:06:35Ramit Sethi?

  Isn't that sort of the theme of your behavior? What does it matter?

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm seeing that I think that way and I need to change that behavior.

• 1:06:43Ramit Sethi?

  And Jill, what is the theme of your financial behavior?

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Give up when he gives up.

• 1:06:49Ramit Sethi?

  Why? You earn more than he does. Not to say that means you know more about money, but why would you put yourself in the passenger's seat with money?

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Because I was tired of fighting. I don't care anymore. I do want to change it because I know that this is my life too. And that's why every now and again I say, no, we gotta do this. Because I know this is my life and this is our children's life and it's our life.

• 1:07:10Ramit Sethi?

  Sounds kind of vague. What I'm trying to do is to get you and you Frank to see if there's a reason why you would want to make vast, wide-ranging changes to the way that you think about money, behave with money, and feel about money. If you want to get out of this, you can, but it's going to require a massive lifestyle, psychological, relational shift. And I'm trying to hunt for that why.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  I want to be able to see my wife happy. I want to live a happy life with her and do the things that we want to do.

• 1:07:45Ramit Sethi?

  Jill?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  I have a reason. I want to change because I want to be able to, one, not work for the rest of my life, to not always fear money, to be able to live freely with my husband and my children, and to be anxiety-free around money.

• 1:08:04Ramit Sethi?

  What are you prepared to do in order to pay off your debt and build a healthy relationship with money?

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Anything.

• 1:08:13Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. Jill?

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Anything it takes.

• 1:08:16Ramit Sethi?

  All right. Let's go back to the CSP. So what do we need to do on this CSP in order for you both to have at least a healthy, conscious spending plan?

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Lower our fixed cost to 50%.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Ramit Sethi?

  Let's even say 60.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:08:32Ramit Sethi?

  What do you want to do?

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  Grocers.

• 1:08:34Ramit Sethi?

  All right. Tell me the number.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  800.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Ramit Sethi?

  I thought you told me this whole story about we need to get butter and we gotta go to the ends of the earth for this oil.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  No, it is true if you want to go shopping, but it's not true if you want to meal prep and not buy so much processed food and start actually making it from... You know, simpler ingredients.

• 1:08:54Ramit Sethi?

  What's happening right now? Hold on, what's in your cabinet and your fridge right now?

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Usually what's in the fridge is like twenty eight containers of meal prepped food with like chicken, rice and broccoli. A taco style.

• 1:09:06Ramit Sethi?

  I don't believe that. This is [bleep]. How do you spend fifteen hundred dollars a month on chicken, rice and broccoli? I know that diet.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, here's where it comes out. Frank, Amazon.

• 1:09:17Ramit Sethi?

  Is anyone gonna tell me the truth right now or what? I'm fearful you're all running out of money in a few months. You have no savings, you have two kids, one of you loses your job, or frankly, if you just keep going the way you're going, it's over. That's it, you lose the house. I think I'd like to see your Amazon account. Can you open it up? There we go. All right, hold on, let me just describe what I'm seeing here. This is from a few days ago, five days ago. I see shampoo out of, you know, some healing ointment. More shampoo and then cutlery set, three hundred sixty pieces. We have a organic aluminum deodorant, cast iron care set and a ten inch cast iron skillet. This order was seventy seven dollars and eighty seven cents.

• 1:10:02Ramit Sethi?

  And then the next one was one hundred and twenty six dollars. Let's go down a little bit more. This was also the same day. This is kids body wash, hand soap, bamboo cutting board, bamboo tong, a bunch of soap and tongs and stuff. This total was two hundred and eight dollars. All right, this is all in the same day, keep going down. This is just a few days prior, fifty two dollars for Elf on the Shelf, Paul Mitchell styling cream and volumizing foam for kids hair. Thirty bucks, similar day, more deodorant and then forty one bucks for body wash, etc. Is there a total amount somewhere? Forty six orders placed in the past three months. So that's kind of interesting.

• 1:10:47Ramit Sethi?

  I didn't see Amazon pop up in the spending.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  I put it in the groceries.

• 1:10:52Ramit Sethi?

  So what happened to all these stories about my kids need this and my kids need that?

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  This goes back to that health conscious part is we are trying to get away from these nonstick poisonous pans. That's the mentality of why we bought them.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  And that was all this month.

• 1:11:06Ramit Sethi?

  Can I ask you guys a direct question? Do you really believe this stuff?

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  I believe that what you can put in your body, it does matter.

• 1:11:11Ramit Sethi?

  Fine. And how's your, both your health?

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Our health is terrible. I mean, I think it's half of it's stress.

• 1:11:17Ramit Sethi?

  But maybe if we buy another 360 piece wood cutlery set, that will change everything.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  I wish we'd return it.

• 1:11:26Ramit Sethi?

  I make jokes online about how a lot of these podcast bros, they would be better spent stopping spending all this money on these dumb mattresses. And these ultraviolet light therapy, whatever stuff they do, take a hundred bucks a month. Go out with a good friend to lunch two times a month. It would be better for them than any of these contraptions that they buy. Now, instead of buying these extremely expensive deodorants, et cetera, et cetera. What might be better for your health?

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  Lowering our debt.

• 1:11:56Ramit Sethi?

  Yes. Why?

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  To have more time to spend with our children. So we could not have to worry about working to pay off the bamboo sticks.

• 1:12:04Ramit Sethi?

  I'm not sitting here telling you like, don't buy this deodorant. That's not my place. It's not my money. But when I talk about living a rich life, I have learned that some people misconstrue what I say. They take my advice and basically use it to twirl around. And chant rich life, rich life, rich life. And then they just buy whatever they want. That's not the message. The message is you have to define your rich life. And then if you can afford it, go for it. But you've got to be able to afford it. You all cannot afford the lifestyle you're living. If you want to, we can talk about how. You both have to work more, raise your income significantly, pay off your debt. But the fact is you cannot afford it right now.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  I knew that our problem was we're spending money that we don't have on things that we don't need, which then takes me back to your question earlier, which was like, what's my behavior that I need to change is the once it's gotten me in a lot of trouble. Most of my purchases are impulse purchases. And so it's in that moment, I have to have it. There's no way around it.

• 1:13:03Ramit Sethi?

  Can we look at your phone right now? Let's open up to texts. What texts are you getting from companies?

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  I have Hungry Root Nutrisystem that we did a long time ago, First Day, which was vitamins for the kids, iFit, a hair product place, Pump Stuff.

• 1:13:20Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, there's a lot. And all that is in what time period?

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Gosh, within the last day.

• 1:13:25Ramit Sethi?

  Do you see that you surround yourself with temptation? This stuff is designed to make you buy.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  I've seen that.

• 1:13:34Ramit Sethi?

  And the fact is, the two of you are not particularly good at having a vision of a rich life. So you end up just buying whatever some freaking charlatan is telling you to. I can watch this stuff and I'm not trying to buy some substandard lotion for my hands. I have one lotion. It's good lotion. I buy the same lotion all the time. I don't need to try anything new. I know it works great. Now, let's talk about what we can do going forward. You told me in your CSP that you can cut some of this spending, this Amazon stuff?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:05Ramit Sethi?

  Like, how much? I thought you needed.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  I would almost be okay with completely canceling it. We can buy toilet paper at the store.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  We sure can.

• 1:14:14Ramit Sethi?

  I like that. So cancel Amazon crime.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Ramit Sethi?

  Or maybe Amazon altogether. It's up to you.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Ramit Sethi?

  That would probably be really helpful. Amazing.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 1:14:25Ramit Sethi?

  Let's go ahead and go back into the CSP because you said you're willing to do anything. So how much should we drop off this groceries $1,500 bill?

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  I think we can get it at $1,000.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:36Ramit Sethi?

  Over time, I think you could get it down more, but let's just say a thousand. All right, your fixed costs are still at seventy-nine percent. We need to get that way lower. Go ahead, tell me what else.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  We don't need clothes all the time.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Kids need shoes and they need clothes. They grow. They have to get them. You might as well set yourself up for for realistic prices.

• 1:14:53Ramit Sethi?

  What's the number?

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  Fifty.

• 1:14:55Ramit Sethi?

  What else? We're at seventy-eight percent.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  I mean, the subscriptions, obviously.

• 1:15:00Ramit Sethi?

  Tell me the number you want to take these subscriptions down to. Tell me what you're gonna cut out of it.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  We can cut out maybe two hundred of it.

• 1:15:07Ramit Sethi?

  Subscriptions from three forty-seven to how much?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Fifty-two dollars.

• 1:15:11Ramit Sethi?

  Fantastic. I love it. The number went to seventy-four percent. Okay.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:15:16Ramit Sethi?

  It's a lot. Still gotta keep working. Keep going. What do you got? How much stuff are you willing to sell?

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  I'd sell everything in this room, memorabilia. I'd sell all my gaming systems. I would just keep my computer, maybe sell the monitor that's expensive and get a small monitor.

• 1:15:30Ramit Sethi?

  Great. How much can you make off of all that?

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Be lucky to get a thousand.

• 1:15:34Ramit Sethi?

  You're willing to do it?

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, if I have to sell it.

• 1:15:37Ramit Sethi?

  Love it. You probably do if you want to get rid of this debt. The debt is increasing faster than you can keep up with it, and it's about to go turbo. You know what those credit card interest rates are about to kick in. You'll never catch up. So a thousand dollars there. Great. How about you, Jill? What are you willing to sell?

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  I'd sell everything, man. I'd sell this whole house. I don't care where we go. I don't want to be in debt. Sell it all.

• 1:15:57Ramit Sethi?

  How much could you make if you sold the house?

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  After everybody gets their cut and said, maybe we'll get lucky and get sixty.

• 1:16:02Ramit Sethi?

  But what's the lowest amount that you could pay for a place that the two of you would agree to live in?

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  I think at best sixteen hundred dollars. We could find a two-bedroom, maybe a three-bedroom for eighteen hundred.

• 1:16:13Ramit Sethi?

  If you sold the house for eighty, you end up making sixty-five, let's just say. All right, so sixty-five, what do you do with that?

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  No, it wouldn't.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  Pay off the car and maybe the credit card debt, but I wouldn't pay off the student loans.

• 1:16:25Ramit Sethi?

  Do you know your interest rate on your student loans?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  They're all around six to seven percent.

• 1:16:31Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, what's the total balance for student loans?

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Hundred and sixty-five?

• 1:16:35Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, that's fine. Frank, what's your opportunity to earn more money?

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  If I wanted to work all the time and be gone, I could probably make a hundred and twenty a year.

• 1:16:45Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, that's good to know. All right, here's what I'm thinking. The first thing I love is that you're all willing to put everything on the table. I love that. A lot of couples are not, but you two are are actually telling the truth when you say we're willing to do anything. And I can see that. I appreciate that. Frank, you're willing to sell a bunch of stuff? Sell it. Get rid of it. And first of all, that'll simplify your life, okay? Less stuff means less temptation to get more stuff. We're living a monastic life for a while, okay? It's gonna be very simple in here. You all should pay off your credit card debt before the interest rate goes up.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's been our goal.

• 1:17:20Ramit Sethi?

  So do that. Use the money accordingly, but it all goes towards paying off debt. Jill, we heard you say you will sell it all, but first I want to know in the house, this stuff that you're buying is again causing you to buy more stuff. It's a never-ending cycle of the American homeowner to fill up their house and never be happy and always be stressed. What could you make if you sold a bunch of stuff in your house?

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Probably three thousand dollars easily.

• 1:17:46Ramit Sethi?

  Three thousand? That's a lot. Is that a realistic number?

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a bike in that closet that I do not use.

• 1:17:53Ramit Sethi?

  How much is the bike?

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  And it's like two grand maybe.

• 1:17:57Ramit Sethi?

  Americans love expensive mattresses, okay? They love them. And then they love expensive bikes, and both of them, they tell me, I cannot live without these remit. You cannot, you cannot spend less on a mattress because it's all about back pain. And affordability is irrelevant. Same with a bike. And it's always like thousands of dollars. All right, sell that freaking thing. What else do you have that you don't use or you even do use and you can sell it?

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a treadmill that's underneath this bed.

• 1:18:25Ramit Sethi?

  Goodbye.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  I can go down to one monitor. Gaming systems that I haven't even used in years. We don't need those.

• 1:18:33Ramit Sethi?

  All right. Sell them or donate them. Goodbye. They're out. We don't need all this junk surrounding us. It's not for us. It's not a part of our rich life. Three thousand bucks plus one thousand over there. That's four thousand bucks. I like it. I like it. That's really good. Okay, great. And then the reason I asked about the housing was, if I'm looking at your housing, I don't know if it's a good idea to sell your house or not. I don't know. The reason I'm saying that is, yeah, of course you'd make some money and you would be able to clear out some debt, which is great. But right now you have a, probably a very low interest rate. Your housing percentage is pretty low, seventeen percent. I want to know that you can find a place that is cheaper than this. Because right now, at least your mortgage is locked.

• 1:19:18Ramit Sethi?

  But if you're renting, for example, let's say right now your mortgage, housing costs are like twenty-six hundred a month is my guess total. So if you found something that was twenty-five hundred a month, I would be like, don't do that. Why would you take on all that risk to save two hundred bucks a month? It makes no sense. But if you found something for, say, twelve hundred a month, boy, you're saving a lot of money. You would be taking that difference and paying off debt, investing it, doing all of those things. So this is the way we got to think about housing decisions. What's going on? What do you both think about that?

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  I'm thinking, how are we gonna make that work with our jobs? That's my first thought. And then my second thought is our kids. Having a backyard, having a consistent school district.

• 1:19:58Ramit Sethi?

  How about having parents that don't go bankrupt?

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  We put so much pride in being able to buy our first home. But we're just one really bad repair away from this being just another issue that we can't afford.

• 1:20:12Ramit Sethi?

  You two can keep the house if you want. You have to make other changes in order to make it feasible.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:17Ramit Sethi?

  It's a very good housing percentage, seventeen percent, way lower than twenty-eight percent. It's just that the rest of your costs are way too high. So you either need to cut some of this stuff, or you need to figure out a way to make a lot more money. But you can't do all these things, not on your income.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Ramit Sethi?

  Well, I love that Frank and Jill are open to making changes like selling their house. It tells me they're actually serious about getting out of this cycle. But I'm not sure that selling their house is the best idea. That's right, everybody, especially internet trolls online. Ramit Sethi, the person who you have claimed is totally against homeownership, which is a [BLEEP] lie, is saying it might not make sense to sell your house. The truth, of course, is that I'm not against buying a house. In fact, someday, I'm sure I will buy a house. What I ask you to do is to run the numbers on the biggest purchase of your life, which in any normal world should not be controversial advice. It is only in our highly weird, puritanical society,

• 1:21:17Ramit Sethi?

  where our one and only one religion is homeownership, that people rebel against the mere suggestion that you should run one calculation before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. What [BLEEP] world am I living in? Anyway, Frank and Jill, good job, but I don't know if you should sell the house. What they need to do is run the numbers and find out if it would make sense for them to sell the house because they could save a substantial amount by renting. Now, if you have questions about whether you can afford to buy a house or you should rent, I've got a free house buying guide for you. Go to iwt.com/house and you will find it there. Now, the other option Jill and Frank have is to increase their income. Listen in as I ask them about their earning potential.

• 1:22:02Ramit Sethi?

  Let's talk about the income side. Right now, Jill, you're making sixty-seven hundred bucks a month, including that draw. This is your own business. How much are you charging?

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  I charge a hundred and fifty per session, but I have like no out-of-pocket people. Most of them are insurance, and insurance sets the rate that you get paid.

• 1:22:21Ramit Sethi?

  Can you raise your rate?

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  No, not with insurance. I've thought about working like in Charlotte where I could charge out of pocket because there's city folks and people who are able to pay that amount. But then it's a commute.

• 1:22:36Ramit Sethi?

  So what's the solution?

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  The option that I've always gone to is just that I work more hours, which has been really difficult on me anyway. To me, I feel like I've maxed myself out on my options. The kids are already struggling with me not being around. I literally see my one son like for an hour a day and I literally see my infant like to put to bed.

• 1:23:04Ramit Sethi?

  This is really hard.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  It is hard, but I also am angry at myself because I know I did it to myself.

• 1:23:14Ramit Sethi?

  Well, you didn't. I don't believe that there are no options. I don't believe that the two of you are stuck and this is the, this is it. In your late twenties and early thirties, I don't believe that. That's sometimes the benefit of talking to a third party, somebody who's not in the weeds. You knocked out $5,000 of debt in the last couple of months. I think that's pretty impressive. We looked at the Amazon spending. Not only did you agree that you don't need a lot of this stuff, you actually told me you want to close off your Amazon account. Amazing. You agreed to sell thousands of dollars worth of stuff. That's going to go straight to your debt. Amazing. We're making progress. It feels hard because it is. We're in some of the hardest parts of this transformation right now. But this is

• 1:23:59Ramit Sethi?

  stuff that really matters. And it matters because it's big numbers and it matters because it's time with your family. Jill, have you ever considered how much you might make if you worked for somebody else?

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  I used to work for someone else. I made less.

• 1:24:13Ramit Sethi?

  Right now, you make approximately $80,000 a year when we include those owner draws. Is this it for your career? Is the max income?

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  I don't want it to be. If I find an ability to work in Charlotte that I could make more income. I mean, that's something that we've avoided for a really long time.

• 1:24:31Ramit Sethi?

  If your salary is capped out at 80K, okay. Then we'll accept that and then we'll shift over to Frank. And then Frank needs to make a lot more money. And Frank might need to travel and that's how it has to be. But right now, I feel like I'm pulling teeth. I'm trying to get you all to give me solutions. You need to get these numbers down. You need to pay off your debt. You need to start saving and investing aggressively. It needs to happen right now. How do you want to do it?

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  We struggle with finding those solutions because we haven't had the people in our life to teach us about these things and give us any guidance. And we haven't been able to find that information ourselves.

• 1:25:08Ramit Sethi?

  I appreciate that. But Jill, you had your grandfather talking about investing when you were young. And how did you describe your reaction to him?

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  In one ear and out the other.

• 1:25:19Ramit Sethi?

  Correct. You both subscribe to my money coaching program. It's very accessible. It's very friendly. I'm there answering questions live. Did you finish it?

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:25:29Ramit Sethi?

  So while I appreciate that you may not have the network that some other people have, you all have the information available to you. It's free. It's premium. It's everywhere. It's not about the information. It's about you two.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  That's fair.

• 1:25:45Ramit Sethi?

  We're at 74%. Got to get this number down. You just cannot have a sustainable life with your fixed costs that high.

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  We might need to downsize the house. I mean, there's all those shadow costs. We might need to go to something smaller.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Ramit Sethi?

  That could certainly change things in a huge way. You would need to be measured about the decision. Because again, your housing costs are not out of control, but your other costs are high. And so if you wanted to downsize, you would need to make sure that you accounted for all costs. How much would you walk away with? How much would it cost to move? How much would it cost to get a new place set up and activated and all that stuff? First month's rent, last month's rent, lots of those considerations. And would you be saving enough on a monthly basis? So that in one year, two years, it would be worth it? And then from then on, it would be much more worth it? You would need to be very thoughtful about those calculations. It's not something to do on a whim. Here's my suggestion.

• 1:26:44Ramit Sethi?

  You need to earn more money. And I think that you need to drop the assumptions about if I can't work more. I can't charge more. I can't do this in Charlotte. Find a way. Like when my parents were growing up and they had, you know, a big family, not a lot of money. They're just like very pragmatic about this. We're going to find a way to do it. We're not eating out. We're not doing this. We're going to do that. And that's the way it is. That is our family culture. Look at this. In this book, the new one, I talk about how to create a family culture. In our family, we what? My wife and I, we are debt free. We are a debt free family. Or in our family, we always eat dinner together on Friday nights with the kids, whatever it may be.

• 1:27:27Ramit Sethi?

  In your family, what's the culture that you've created?

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  We're workaholics.

• 1:27:32Ramit Sethi?

  We're workaholics. We are stressed out, in poor health, and we buy stuff to feel better about our dire situation. Fair?

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:27:42Ramit Sethi?

  And we also don't communicate with each other.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 1:27:45Ramit Sethi?

  All right. In our healthy relationship, what do we do?

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  Communicate about finances.

• 1:27:51Ramit Sethi?

  How often?

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  At least every month.

• 1:27:54Ramit Sethi?

  Okay. How are you going to do that? There was this whole thing about the kids. How are you going to do that?

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  We're going to make it happen.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Find time.

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  With the kids.

• 1:28:00Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, great.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Make a priority.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  If one kid has to sit nearby us while we do it, that has to be how it's done.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Maybe include him into the conversation.

• 1:28:09Ramit Sethi?

  Love it. What's next?

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  We write down things before we buy them.

• 1:28:12Ramit Sethi?

  Love it. What about the food thing? You're all dropping your food costs dramatically. How are you going to do that?

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  We need to start shopping store brand products.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  We cook our meals.

• 1:28:22Ramit Sethi?

  The whole thing about like, we buy all this organic stuff. The fact is, you just can't afford it. I'm sorry. If you want to afford it, move into a one bedroom apartment and then you can buy all the fancy stuff you want. That's up to you. It's your choice, your money, but you can't do both. So it would be very worthwhile for the two of you to really define, in our family, we blank. You can always change it, you can always add or remove, but right now there is no we. And sometimes if somebody slips, they try something, you just go, hey, look, I thought we agreed. Like this is our family. You don't have to come down on them. It's just like, hey, just a reminder, like this is what we agreed on. I want to make sure that we're both sticking to it. Sometimes I need help. But right now it seems like you want to go out to pizza tonight, but in our family, we only spend on whatever, eight hundred bucks a month for groceries. Boom.

• 1:29:07Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, cool. Um, back to this. Let's talk about the earning part, the last part of it. The earning needs to go up. It's just that simple. Frank, when was the last time you looked for a new job?

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  Two years. I tried the two-year cycle approach. I've been slowly, steadily increasing over two years. I'll look and seek for new positions.

• 1:29:24Ramit Sethi?

  And how much can you get paid today?

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  Well, if I take a job that's no longer remote, I could make a lot more, like fifty thousand more a year.

• 1:29:30Ramit Sethi?

  If you had to commute?

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could. I have a CDL class A license. I could become a truck driver.

• 1:29:36Ramit Sethi?

  Well, here's how I would approach that conversation. Okay, so I would start off by saying, let's talk about, look, I have this amazing opportunity. If I wanted to, I could make fifty thousand dollars more. First off, can we just give each other a high five that we even have this opportunity? Like, that's amazing that we even have that. Like, high five, I love you. Oh, my gosh, we're so fortunate. Then, can we talk about what would happen if I did this? Let's first start with all the positives. What would we get? Well, let's redo the CSP. I would type in adapted numbers. You would see things go insane. The numbers would come way down. You would have thousands of dollars extra you could save, invest. Okay, all that. Let's talk about what it would mean for us, positive stuff. Well, we'd have more money, we could have some help, et cetera.

• 1:30:20Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, now, all that stuff is great. We stayed there, we focused on the positive, now let's go to the negative. Well, what would it mean? It would mean time away, it would mean you would have to take on more burden, Jill. Jill's like, I don't want to do that. And so it would mean this, and it would mean that, and we're apart. And you write it all down. And you sit on it for a day. And you come back and you talk about it. You take another crack at it. Here's what I'm thinking. I definitely think we need to make more money, but I don't want you to be on the road that much. Is there something else we could do? Or, you know what? I think this is a really good idea for the next two years. Two years, extra 50K. It puts us in a position. We pay this off. We do it aggressively. We get on our feet and then we can switch to something else. Who knows? That's how I would have that conversation. What do you notice about that approach?

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  It's bought out and you're waiting on the decision.

• 1:31:06Speaker 01

  We're working together.

• 1:31:07Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. Both of you have a voice. This is a decision for both of you. It affects the two of you. It affects your kids. It affects your relationship. But we gotta start with all the positive stuff. That's the thing I noticed. It's not like just everyone going to their corner of the ring and then boxing. It's like, no, let's be methodical about this. Treat it with the respect it deserves. Similarly for you, Jill. Your role, your income. You're a therapist. You have options. Maybe there's a commute involved. Who knows? Maybe you move cities. Who knows? The fact is, right now, though, it's not sustainable. You two cannot operate on $162 a month in guilt-free spending. No way. You're spending 10 times that right now. You have no savings. The minute something breaks in your house or something goes wrong with your car, you two are in big trouble.

• 1:31:51Ramit Sethi?

  So the biggest suggestion I have is you immediately start saving at least $1,000 a month. But the truth is, you need to make some big changes fast. It's as simple as that. How are you both feeling hearing this?

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  It's hard information. It's information we knew. It's information that we didn't want to look at, that we couldn't have an open dialogue for longer than, you know, a few moments. So I think that's progress. To even be able to sit down and have this conversation and us both still be sitting here, that's a plus. I feel like we're actually gonna be able to move through this and get on the other side of this and feel like we have a life to live.

• 1:32:28Ramit Sethi?

  Above that. Frank?

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  The choices that we're doing are only hurting ourselves. We are the thorn to our own financial problems and we need to stop doing these things to us and we need to come together and make time for each other and make time for our money. And we need to, we need to get this ball moving quickly.

• 1:32:49Ramit Sethi?

  I like that. Time is not on your side, but if you start to use time, it can become your biggest friend, not your biggest adversary. Look at this. Here's your investments. $27,554. You're not contributing anything else right now. Let's say we give it thirty five years to grow. You end up with two hundred and ninety four thousand dollars. That's at retirement. What do you all think about that?

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  Not enough.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  That's not enough. We ain't retiring.

• 1:33:17Ramit Sethi?

  That means you would live off about eleven thousand dollars per year.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  Good luck.

• 1:33:21Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. Good news is you have a house, but nobody can live off eleven thousand dollars a year. Certainly not thirty five years from now.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  That's what I was afraid of.

• 1:33:29Ramit Sethi?

  Sometimes the best thing we can do with our fears is shine a light on them and look them straight in the eye. This is our future unless we make a change. So you two have digested a lot. We have talked about your childhood. We've talked about your relationship, talked about your careers, your income, your spending, even the stories you tell yourselves and you tried to tell me. What are you gonna do tomorrow?

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  Have a conversation, a real conversation and reframe our thinking.

• 1:33:57Ramit Sethi?

  Love that. Then what?

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Change how we spend. I think having physical cash to limit us will be a good, a good way to handle this.

• 1:34:05Ramit Sethi?

  Good idea. What else?

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  Maybe I, instead of doing the drastic approach of changing careers, I try to go to the next step in my career. Maybe I look for a promotion.

• 1:34:15Ramit Sethi?

  Love that. Map it out. Talk to the boss. There's so many options on the table. You're doing two things at once. They're so powerful. One is you're moving fast. Get those things on Facebook. You start using cash. And then two is you are zooming out, out of this dark, never ending tunnel that you described to me at the beginning of our call, Frank. And what you've kind of done is you've stopped the sliding down and you said, wait a second, I don't want to go down there anymore. It sucks down here. I'm pausing, I'm looking around with my flashlight. What are my options? Cause I'm making my way back, back to the light. That's where I'm going.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  When we do make those big changes, what does it look like in terms of our retirement and savings?

• 1:34:55Ramit Sethi?

  It's a great question. Let's say that you sold the house and you took ten thousand dollars of that money and invested just that ten thousand dollars, right?

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:35:05Ramit Sethi?

  Let's see what would happen. So that used to be twenty seven, we'll make it thirty seven. Watch this number right here. Instead of two ninety four, it turns into four hundred thousand. So that ten thousand dollars turned into over a hundred thousand dollars increase. You all see the power of that? Now imagine we keep that, it's at four hundred, but we do twelve thousand dollars a year or one thousand dollars a month invested. Okay, look at what happens here. Two point one million dollars.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:35:35Ramit Sethi?

  What did you notice?

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  That's feasible, like if we can climb out of this and have like, be regimented, like we could actually retire, we could actually have a life to live.

• 1:35:44Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, this is why I was, I was getting a little aggravated when we were spending five minutes talking about some $10 subscription and I was like, we can't be doing this. These are the numbers that matter. $10 is a waste of life for you two to be focusing on. Remember I talked about $30,000 questions? Here it is. This is what I would be starting with as a couple. We are going to be investing $1,000 a month. We make $150,000 a year. We can find $12,000 a year to invest.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:36:13Ramit Sethi?

  And if we can't find 12,000, we'll start with 5,000. And as we make more, we'll increase that number. It's so powerful. On the other hand, you could end up changing nothing. You could end up perpetuating the same cycle that both of you grew up with, doing the same thing, teaching your kids this, doing these games about, oh, let's just tell them to save, but we don't save. Let's buy them everything, not teaching them any restraint. And then you all end up without a lot of money. And then your kids end up without a lot of money and it goes on. I don't want that.

• 1:36:40Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't want that.

• 1:36:42Ramit Sethi?

  Cool. Now, what should I expect six months from now?

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Downsizing in some capacity.

• 1:36:50Ramit Sethi?

  What does that mean?

• 1:36:51Speaker 02

  I have three desks in my office. I don't need this. I don't need all this stuff. This stuff doesn't feel good anymore. It just feels like

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  a burden.

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  Oh, there goes, there goes two months of retirement right there. Look at that.

• 1:37:03Ramit Sethi?

  Wow, I love that. So you can have a simpler life. So that means stuff in your house, your room is going to look simpler. It's going to be gone. Loving.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Ramit Sethi?

  Beautiful. Okay, great. And what else?

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  I think we need to make career changes, whatever that looks like. If that looks like me trying to do private pay, I have never tried. I've been too afraid to try.

• 1:37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, career advancements, that's a great point.

• 1:37:26Ramit Sethi?

  Amazing. The two of you are so young. If you both decided together, we are changing the way that we live. It is going to be, it's going to be a journey. It's going to be a tough journey. But the best part is you get to do it together. You could get out of this, change the trajectory of your life and you could do it in two to three years. It will be magical. You are at that point still in your 30s. Young. And then you have

• 1:37:54Ramit Sethi?

  Wind behind you, pushing you forward together for the rest of your rich life. Every stage, learning, oh my God, this is what we want to do with our money. Now we have a little bit of extra. We paid off our debt. We've taught our kids how to be responsible. They're all learning with us. We have a family culture of money. We're having fun. We're being super responsible. We're investing aggressively. We actually like talking about money and we are living our rich life together. That's what I see.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  That would feel amazing. I want that. Yeah, yes, yes.

• 1:38:27Ramit Sethi?

  100%. I want to thank Jill and Frank for being so open today. Being stuck in this cycle of debt sucks. It's heavy. It feels like there's no light at the end of the tunnel. And at a certain point, many people just give up. They tell themselves, this is how we're going to live. We've always been in debt. We're always going to be in debt. But it does not have to be that way. They're going to have to make some big changes to get out of this cycle. And they say they're up for it. But as you've seen on this podcast, almost everybody says they want to make big changes. Only some people follow through. And that is what we get to see right now. Let's check out their follow ups. We will start with Frank.

• 1:39:11Ramit Sethi?

  One of the biggest surprises that I took from that call was just about how much we lied to ourselves about the reasons why we're in this situation. It seems that we have memorized some excuse as to why we're in this situation. But in reality, we're in it because of our own choices. So that was, that was a reality check. My biggest takeaway is to make time about, you know, our finances and how to talk about them and, and not give up and just stay focused on our long-term goals, our retirement, our savings, and getting our debt paid down. And speaking of our debt being paid down, we chose to cut out Amazon completely. We meant what we said. We also are going to start using cash. It's easier to spend stuff when you're using a card. So that's how we're going to create a better household around money. Just being focused and having those open conversations.

• 1:39:56Ramit Sethi?

  So thanks again to your team for showing us what we can do better as a family. And now Jill's follow up.

• 1:40:04Speaker 03

  What really stuck with us is just being able to have good dialogue and conversation about our finances and not avoiding the problem. We've been doing a lot better with having a lot of conversations. We went ahead and finished the money coaching program and have started our automated system, which we're getting used to. It's hard, it's a hard adjustment, but we're very, very excited to actually, you know, sit back and allow our money to work for us rather than us worrying about our money all the time. We are looking into selling our home and going to be renting for a little bit, which is going to be a big shift, but we are very excited about what's to come and being able to actually afford the things that we want to afford, which is going on vacations and

• 1:40:47Speaker 03

  trips with our family and having more time together as a family. And that's really what we're hopeful for. So we have some big things in the mix of just life changes and already have paid off two credit cards, which we are very happy. We paid off a personal loan and one of our credit cards, and that was great, too. So we're making good progress. Thanks.

• 1:41:11Ramit Sethi?

  Honestly, amazing, amazing. Yes, I love all the tactical changes they made. I love how quickly they moved. I love all of that. But what I really love is how they started to look at money differently. And when you start to look at money differently, when you radically reconceptualize your relationship with money, you will often find that you reconceptualize your relationship with the people you love. Jill and Frank, I'm very proud of you. Thank you for sharing your story, and please keep me updated.