The Money Plan for Couples: How to Build Wealth as a Team (Step-by-Step)

Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Join Master Money Academy today! In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew breaks down exactly how to manage money as a couple and build wealth together, covering why you should never start with spreadsheets and always begin with the dream first, how to calculate the freedom number that makes work optional for both of you, why automating savings and investments removes money fights before they start, how defining personal freedom spending eliminates 90 percent of financial arguments, and why a simple monthly money meeting is all it takes to keep two people fully aligned on the path to financial independence. Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Partner Deals Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com/PFP Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at http://Indeed.com/personalfinance Go to http://policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to http://fundrise.com/pfp Go to Acorns.com/pfp and start automating your investments and get a $5 bonus today! Get 50% Off Monarch, the all-in-one financial tool at http://www.monarch.com/PFP DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off! Resources: Empower Calculator.net Dream Life Worksheet (For Couples) Courses: Automate Your Entire Money System in One Weekend Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

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• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

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• 1:17Speaker 01

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 1:20Andrew Giancola?

  When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI website builder. I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch.

• 2:04Andrew Giancola?

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• 2:41Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to dive into how to manage money as a couple. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the master money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter and don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews. They truly do mean the world to us. Now today, we're going

• 3:25Andrew Giancola?

  to be diving into how to manage money as a couple. And I am really excited to dive deeper into this because once you get your relationship right, when it comes to money, that will absolutely change your financial life over the course of the long term. Why? Because the person that you marry actually has a dramatic impact on how much wealth you can build over time. If you both are not on the same page, and one person is trying to build wealth, while the other person is in this time or place where they want to spend more money on different values, you will never make progress with your finances. And so what I'm going to show you today is this episode is going to be slightly different because I'm going to give you the exact framework step by step of exactly what you need to do to make sure you get money aligned when you manage money as a couple.

• 4:09Andrew Giancola?

  Now, this is a very cool system, and we taught this system inside Master Money Academy and got some incredible results from some of our members inside of there. So I'm going to give you some portions of This and the actionable portions of what we taught inside Master Money Academy. That's the cool thing about Master Money Academy is we dive deeper. We pick a topic every single month and we dive deeper into that topic. And we do a master class to give you those frameworks so that you can go out and take action on this. And so a lot of our students inside Master Money Academy love this. And so we're going to do this in three steps. First, we're going to build the dream and start actually having conversations around money. This is one of the most important areas that you need to make sure you do not skip. Is you need to build out your dream life and where you want to go.

• 4:52Andrew Giancola?

  Everything, when it comes to having conversations around money, comes down to your why. Why are you actually pursuing this and why are you getting after this? Okay, number two is we're going to build the system. How are you actually going to manage money together? How are you going to make sure that you both are on the same page? How are we going to have this system set up? We're going to talk about all those different things and answer all those different questions for you. Three, then we're going to talk about how you can let money support your life. So that you can go out and get exactly what you want in this life. So you can do what you want in this life and prioritize the things that you both love together. And so I'm going to talk through some of the challenges that a lot of you may go through. When you are managing money as a couple or in a relationship. And we're going to dive deeper on how you can both get on the same page. Cause guess what?

• 5:36Andrew Giancola?

  You may not be on the same page right now. Maybe you have arguments about money. Maybe you're fighting a lot about money. Maybe you're both just really worried about your finances. I'm going to help you solve that today. This episode would cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. If you went to some sort of financial therapist. And I'm going to show you exactly the plan today of step by step, what you can do. So I would highly recommend out there to take some notes. Cause this is going to be a framework that could change your relationship forever. We're going to take a quick break and then without further ado, let's get into it.

• 6:07Andrew Giancola?

  All right, number one, and this is phase one, we're going to build out the dream. Now this is the fun part when it comes to building wealth. This is the fun part when it comes to managing money with your finances. Now, what I highly recommend for most of you out there is do not make the mistakes I made. When we first got married, my wife and I decided to get our finances together. And guess what? One of the biggest things that I did and I made the biggest mistake overall. Is every single time that I saw something happening with our money, I first would pull out the spreadsheets. This is the wrong order to have a conversation about money, especially with your significant other. Don't start pulling out the spreadsheets. Don't start pulling out the budget. Don't start pulling out all the transactions on Amazon. We know you've got 15 Amazon boxes at your door.

• 6:51Andrew Giancola?

  We know you go to Target all the time. We know you shop at Walmart. We know you spend a little bit too much at ALO. But at the same time, we want to make sure that instead, we are building and starting with the end in mind. So I want you to build this dream life together because guess what? Money is a tool and money is the tool that is going to get you anything you want in life. And if you do it together and you build this together, you both will become unstoppable as you get the ball rolling. So again, do not start with spreadsheets. Do not start with the numbers first and begin with the end in mind. Next, I want you to make sure that you're having a real conversation when you do this. I want you to have an open and honest conversation. I do not want you pointing fingers. I do not want you saying you buy this, you buy this and you buy this.

• 7:35Andrew Giancola?

  And the other person comes back and does the same exact thing. Instead, I want you to make this fun. I want you to dream together and you can even turn this into a fun weekend trip if you wanted to. If you want to turn this into a whole event because it is that important to you, go get away for two days, go get a hotel and start to have these conversations because you are aligning and designing a life that you will be living for the rest of your life. So this is very, very important. Another thing I want to note is that you have one life, but a shared vision together. So individual goals are going to matter and you both are going to have very different goals. But I also want you to have some shared goals that you both agree on. Shared goals matter more. And so we're going to have these individual goals. That's completely fine, but you also want to make sure that you are agreeing in some of these other areas. And your overall goal, when you're having these conversations is alignment.

• 8:20Andrew Giancola?

  Your overall goal is not perfection. You're not going to be perfect the first time around when you have these conversations, but you want us to try to get aligned and as aligned as possible. For a lot of folks, when you are arguing about money or if you're having issues around money, getting just aligned in some way, shape or form on some of these areas is going to change your life forever. It's going to remove the stress. From the relationship and some of that anxiety that you are probably feeling right now. Now, inside Master Money Academy, we gave our members something called a dream life worksheet, which helps them map out their dream life. And the cool thing about the dream life worksheet is it's going to map out and kind of be the basis for every single financial decision. And so you want to think through, what is my dream life and exactly where do we want to get to? And so you go through step by step and ask each other questions. Well, what do we want to do in life? Where do we want to retire?

• 9:05Andrew Giancola?

  Where do we want to be? How do we want to think about money? How do we want to manage our dollars? What do we want our kids to do? Do we want them to go to private school or public school? How do we want our life to look when it comes to managing money? I want you to think about the vacations you want to take every single year. I want you to think about both of your hobbies and how much you want to spend on those hobbies. Maybe you love going to Pilates class. For example, my wife loves going to Pilates classes. And so you have to figure out how to budget to make sure that can work. Pilates classes aren't cheap. And so instead, what we do is make sure we prioritize those because it brings her so much value. For me specifically, one of the things that I want to do over the course of the next couple of years is get better at golf. I've been playing golf for a long time. I have not gotten better whatsoever. In fact, I've most likely gotten worse.

• 9:48Andrew Giancola?

  And so I want to go and find a golf coach that can help me through this process so that I can step by step, learn more and build up a skill that I can use for the rest of my life. These are two separate goals, but two shared things that we both really enjoy. And so moving forward, we want to make sure we prioritize some of those dollars for each individual person so that we can get the ball rolling. But we also want to travel more with our family. We want to spend more time with our family. And so we want to prioritize dollars for travel going forward. We've thought about, hey, where do we want to live in the future? What type of house do we want to have? We've mapped out retirement. We've mapped out the thought process of that. But we've also mapped out the day to day, week to weekend, month to month, money management and how that's going to work. And so we built our dream life by just going through this process and having a conversation and asking questions.

• 10:32Andrew Giancola?

  Now, step two, once you do this, then you need to define your lifestyle cost. Your dream life is going to need a price tag and you're going to need to come up with how much you want to spend and how much you want to save in retirement or later on down the line. Maybe you both have agreed on one thing. Want financial freedom. You don't want to work so much. You want to spend more time with your kids. You want to spend more time with your family. You want to spend more time with your aging parents. And so you decided you want a financial freedom. Well, that's a very real reason to do this. Or maybe you're just trying to think through what I need to do next. Well, we need to make this real. And so that is what defining our lifestyle cost is going to do. And so what you need to do is list your current annual spending right now.

• 11:13Andrew Giancola?

  What is your burn rate? How much money are you burning every single year? And you need to figure out, okay, let's think through these expenses. And in the future, maybe we won't have things like childcare. Maybe we won't have as much commuting costs. Maybe we won't have things like work-related costs, or we won't have a large house. Maybe we want to downgrade our house, get a smaller house, because there's not going to be so many people in the household. And your dream life could be, hey, I want to move out to a farm, or I want to move out to the country. Maybe you want a little tiny beach house or a condo. Those are all great goals and great conversations to have. Then what we want to do is we want to add the new expenses into that. So maybe you want to travel more. Maybe you want to have more experiences and you want to have a budget so that you can have new experiences on a monthly basis. You also want to think through healthcare.

• 11:58Andrew Giancola?

  Maybe you want to give more to causes you believe in. You feel like you're not doing enough for those causes that give you that burning desire in your heart, that give you that passion, that give you that reality of how life is going. Maybe you want to spend more on hobbies, just like I was talking about with the golf and the Pilates. Or maybe you want to spend more going fishing. Maybe you want to buy a boat. So many different options out there, but you need to make sure that we think through exactly what this is going to cost. Okay. And then I want you to go through all those numbers and try to guesstimate where you think your dream life is going to be. And I want you to have one annual number. So you know how much you spend now, but get as close as possible to that one annual number. This is going to be the number that represents life done well. What does life done well look like?

• 12:43Andrew Giancola?

  L D W. What does life done well look like? I say W because that's how my grandmother used to say it. L D W. What does life done well look like? You need to figure out what that number is. Step three. Now let's talk about your freedom number because we need to turn this lifestyle into financial independence. Most people listening to this podcast, if you're not already financially free, and I know we have some listeners who have become financially free just from listening to this over the course of the last six years, but I want you to have this conversation and say, what is my freedom number? Now, we talk about the freedom number a lot. We think about the freedom of number a lot. And in fact, if you are a wealth builder or anybody inside Master Money Academy, we talk about making sure that you are updating this number on

• 13:24Andrew Giancola?

  a yearly basis. And so the freedom number is going to be that number that is your north star. That is where you are going. That is your why. And so this is going to motivate you over time. Now, how do you find your freedom number? Let's do some quick and dirty math. Now, the 4% rule is the rule that is just the baseline number, the conservative number that you can think about when it comes to how much you can draw down every single year in retirement. And so to reverse that number, we just use the 25X rule, meaning you figure out how much money you're going to spend every single year, multiply that number by 25, and that is how much you need to have in investments in order to be able to be financially independent. Now, social security would come into play down the line, and a bunch of other factors. If you have other income sources, or pensions, or anything

• 14:07Andrew Giancola?

  else, those can also factor in and lower this number, lower your overall need. But the 25X rule is going to be the quick and dirty back of the napkin math that you can use to go through this. So you have your freedom number. Now, we need to choose our timeline. And so this is going to be the timeframe where we figure out, okay, when do we want work to be optional? How far away is that going to be? And compare that to the age that we are today. Maybe you want to retire at 55. Maybe you want to retire at 50. Maybe you want to retire in your 40s. Maybe you want to be one of those outliers, and there are some of those outliers that listen to this podcast who have retired in their 30s. But figure out what that number is going to be. Maybe you want to work longer because you both love your jobs, or one of you loves your job. And so you want to work

• 14:50Andrew Giancola?

  well into your 60s, maybe even your 70s. Or you never want to retire, and you just want to keep your mind sharp. You want to keep doing what you're doing, but just focus on taking some time away and reducing the amount of days that you're working. There are so many different options here, but I want you to think through Your timeline and where you're going to go because this is a very important thing. Now, if you don't know how much time this is going to take you, I highly recommend you using a compound interest calculator. You can go to calculator.net, for example, and utilize the compound interest calculator there. But just go in there and say, okay, I'm investing X amount of dollars every single month right now. And so I need to figure out how long this is going to take me before I hit this freedom number. So how long is this process going to take before I nail down that freedom number?

• 15:32Andrew Giancola?

  Now, step five, the next thing we need to do is take inventory, meaning we need to know where we're starting from and we need to understand how much we have on hand and calculate our net worth. So we need to know the scorecard, we need to know where we are, we need to know what we're doing. And so making sure you have your net worth calculated is very important. I'm going to link this down below in the show notes, but there is a tool called Empower that is completely free and it helps you track your net worth. I highly encourage you to utilize that if you're not using some other tool right now because Empower is free and it will automatically track your net worth for you. And so it's a great tool for anybody out there that is looking for something like that to track their net worth, but your net worth is just your assets minus your liabilities. This is your financial scorecard and we want to see our net worth increasing over time.

• 16:15Andrew Giancola?

  And so your assets are going to be things like cash, investments, retirement accounts, and your liabilities are going to be things like your debt. So your mortgages, your student loans, credit cards, those types of things are what are going to be the difference between your assets and your liabilities. And the outcome, when you start to calculate this, should be your net worth snapshot. That should be exactly where you land and you should see where your net worth is. If you're starting off from negative or you have a low net worth, that is okay because you can develop a plan to get yourselves out of this situation. If you're in a lot more debt than the assets that you currently have, you may have a negative net worth, but that again is okay. You can get out of that situation and you can figure out exactly where you are. Now, step six is I want you to define the gap, meaning I want you to stay conceptual here.

• 16:59Andrew Giancola?

  No systems yet, we're going to talk about systems in a second, but I want you to have a conversation about the gap and I want you to compare your net worth number to your freedom number. I want you to think through, okay, well, right now, we have a net worth of, let's just say it's $50,000 and your net worth is $50,000. What's your freedom number? The number that you want to get to and then the amount of dollars that you want to have invested need to be $3 million, meaning you could draw it down $120,000 per year if you have $3 million invested. And so how long is that going to take based on how much you have available to start investing every single year? We want to figure out what that is and then we can say to ourselves, okay, well, if we want to get there faster, we need to make sure that we are taking action on some of these different items. So maybe we need to increase our income so we can invest more dollars.

• 17:44Andrew Giancola?

  Maybe we need to decrease our spending so we can invest more dollars. Maybe we need to do a little bit of both so that we can get the ball rolling. Maybe one of the spouses wants to stay home with the kids for a little while, but maybe if they work two more years, you realize, oh, wow, if you work two more years, we save your income, then we'll be able to retire 10 years faster. So there's a lot of different scenarios that you could look at, a lot of different scenarios that you could consider when you're doing this. And this is why we have Master Money Academy to kind of show you some of these scenarios and you can ask me questions on that weekly basis. So it's a very powerful exercise that you and your spouse can be doing when you're having these conversations, but I want you dreaming in this phase still. I want you dreaming about your future so that you both start to smile ear from ear and really feel comfortable about this plan that you are both putting together.

• 18:29Andrew Giancola?

  Because when you're both aligned and you're both on the same page, this is when you both are motivated. This is when you both can see, oh, this is why I'm doing this. This is why I want to run and push forward in order to accomplish this goal. A great analogy that I read in the book, The Compound Effect on this, was let's say, for example, there is two buildings. And in between those two buildings, there is a wooden beam that you have to walk across to get from building one to building two. Now, for most people out there, if I asked you to walk across that wooden beam, across these two buildings, there's no sides, there's no roof, there's no handrail. Most of you would say no. Why? Because it's very risky. It's not worth the time and energy to do that. But what if your child was in building B and it was a burning building?

• 19:12Andrew Giancola?

  Well, you would have a really big motivation to run across that beam and you would do it in an instant in order to save your child. That is your why. Your why is that burning building. Your why is to make sure that you are going to save your life, save your financial life by taking control of this and taking advantage of the overall process that we are talking through here. And so when you do this, all of a sudden you both are aligned on your why and you can both get attacking. And so I love the dream portion. I love dreaming about this because you can really think through and have conversations and very open conversations about what you want your life to look like. Guess what, guys? You can do anything you want in this life. You can design your life the way you want it to look.

• 19:56Andrew Giancola?

  And that's what I want to show you because money is the tool that allows you to do it. It's not about the money. It's all about the life that you want and designing that life. Want more freedom and flexibility? Money is going to help you get there. Want to spend more time with your kids? Money is going to help you get there. Want to spend more time in your relationship so you can actually see each other every day? Money is gonna help you get there. And the only way to do this is to use money as a tool. You should be a user of money. You should not be a hoarder of money. You should be a user of money so that you can utilize it for the things that you want. So after you do this phase, this is phase one. You should know exactly what the life is that you want. And when you have these conversations, then you can move on to the next step.

• 20:39Andrew Giancola?

  You should know what it costs. What is it going to cost for us to get there? You should know the number that you're aiming for, meaning what is your retirement number? You should both should have that in your brain and you should understand why you want to get there. And then you should understand the general path forward. Generally, what are we going to be doing next? And we're going to talk about exactly how to execute that. Because in phase two, we're going to build the money system right after this.

• 21:04Andrew Giancola?

  All right. So we started to plan out our dream life. And now we're going to build the money system. And this is how our plan is actually going to run. This is how our plan is actually going to happen and how we're going to execute that plan. And so this is very, very important. The thing and the way to do this is with systems. Now, why do systems matter? Because if you have a vision without a system, it's just going to create stress. And most of us out there, we may have this vision of what we want our life to look like. But if we have no system in place, it's Never gonna happen. It's never gonna get executed and it's never gonna be actually achieved. Well, you've seen me talk about this in the past. Habits are for suckers and systems are for winners. And systems are the way that you can get to exactly where you want to go.

• 21:43Andrew Giancola?

  So step one, we're gonna have a conversation about these systems and we're gonna talk about how to manage your money together as a team, as a couple, and we're gonna dive deeper into this. So before tools, you gotta decide the rules. And so when we look at this, we're gonna figure out one, what is our structure? Now, when it comes to managing money, you have a couple of different options here. Number one, you could fully combine your finances when you're married. And that is option one. Option two is you could have separate accounts plus shared household account that helps you manage those dollars so you can get your money automated. And then number three is you would have fully separate accounts with agreement responsibilities.

• 22:25Andrew Giancola?

  Now, let me tell you right now, I'm gonna go through all three of these options and we're gonna have a conversation about this. We're gonna have an open and honest conversation about this. Because my preferred method and the method that I have done from day one is fully combined. Now, let me put a caveat on this. When I first got married with my wife, neither one of us had any money. We were both pretty broke. And so this was something where we didn't have the difference of like one of us had a million dollar net worth. The other person had a bunch of credit card debt. That is a situation where you wanna start to have conversations around this. And there are ways to set up your structure and set up your accounts. So you do not have to worry if you don't wanna fully combine your money. Now, I am all in on combining my money. We share a bed, we share a house, we're gonna share bank accounts too.

• 23:11Andrew Giancola?

  That is the way that we operate in our household. But if you don't wanna operate that way, there are reasons in this life to not want to do that. And if you don't wanna operate that way, I would give you the second best option in my opinion. Option two is to have two separate accounts. You keep your separate accounts if you wanna keep them separate. But you have a shared checking account that you pay all of your bills out of. You pay off your credit cards out of, you pay off everything else. This is going to give you the framework or the system that allows you To ensure that you can still automate your finances because it is almost it's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before.

• 23:53Andrew Giancola?

  And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies

• 24:36Andrew Giancola?

  starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know it's not just me anymore. It takes a great team behind the scenes to make everything happen. And if I had to hire someone tomorrow, I'd want someone who could jump right in and make an impact. That's why I'd use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. When workplace chaos hits, Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you reach qualified candidates faster. Your job gets boosted in search results so you're spending less time searching and more time interviewing the right people. Plus, you only pay for results, which I absolutely love.

• 25:21Andrew Giancola?

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• 26:04Andrew Giancola?

  Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. If you've heard any recent episode of Health Corner, you know that I have spent the last few years trying to optimize my sleep. I've tried sleep trackers, cooling my room, changing my nighttime routine, all the different things, but nothing really matters as much as having the right mattress. And that's one of the reasons I love Leesa. A great mattress is one of those things that you use every single night and you spend a third of your life sleeping and it can make a huge difference on how you feel the next day. Leesa has mattresses designed for different sleep positions and comfort preferences. And their sleep quiz can help you get matched in less than two minutes. Plus, they're designed

• 26:49Andrew Giancola?

  and they're assembled in the USA and they come with free shipping, easy returns and a 120 night free sleep trial. So go to leesa.com for up to 30% off mattress plus and get an extra $50 off with promo code PFP. Exclusive for my listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code PFP for 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Leesa.com promo code PFP. One thing I've learned from running multiple businesses is there's usually a gap between how you think work is getting done and how it's actually getting done. And we've had times where we thought we

• 27:32Andrew Giancola?

  knew the bottleneck, only to realize later, the real issue was somewhere completely different. That's exactly what today's sponsor, Scribe, helps solve. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500. And Scribe Optimize turns real workflow data into decisions your AI strategy actually needs. Automatically capturing how work happens across approved apps, surfacing inefficient And opportunities with no interviews and no manual discovery and no extra work from your team, which is the key. And the live dashboard shows where work is happening, how much time it's taking and where the biggest opportunities are right now. It automatically discovers workflows

• 28:13Andrew Giancola?

  across multiple tools, then highlights your biggest inefficiencies and gives AI powered recommendations with estimated time saving. You know, I love saving time. It's also built with privacy in mind. It only runs across approved business applications. User level data is anonymous by default and sensitive information is automatically redacted and never leaves your firewall. To see, optimize and action, head describe how slash PFP and mention PFP for a 30 day risk free trial. That's S C R I B E dot H O W slash P F P. It's impossible to automate your finances if you have two separate accounts and people are paying parts of each and every single bill. So instead, the only way to automate your finances is still have some sort of nucleus

• 28:57Andrew Giancola?

  or hub where all the bills come out of and then you just automatically transfer into that checking account and that checking account transfers everywhere else. This is getting tactical, but it's very important to think about this. If you have two fully separate accounts, my red flags are going up. If you're Venmoing each other back and forth just to pay bills, if you are trying to figure out ways around this, there has to be some sort of trust put into place and there has to be some sort of shared vision put into place. Now you may have your reasons for that and that is completely fine. If you have those reasons and it is something that I'm not aware of, that is completely fine. I am not going to belittle you for having some system that I don't agree with because there could be real reasons for that. I know a lot of people have very different situations, which is why we say personal finance is personal. I've heard a lot of

• 29:42Andrew Giancola?

  finance influencers as of late say that's a ridiculous statement and it is absolutely not. Every single person's financial situation, and this is a great reason why, is very different. But if you want to know what I do, everything is combined into combined accounts. Everything we do is together. Everything my wife and I do is as a team and as we move forward, that is the way we share our vision, the way we parent, the way we handle money, the way we handle anything in life is we have a shared vision moving forward. So you need to choose your account structure. You need to decide what works best for you and then go from there. Then, once you choose that account structure, I want you to clarify your why. Why did you choose that For me, we have combined finances so we can A, simplify our money.

• 30:27Andrew Giancola?

  B, so we can automate our money very easily. And then if you didn't combine your finances, well, why? Was it because of past experiences? Were you in a relationship that had financial infidelity? Were you in a relationship that had some different issues? Is there big drastic income differences? Are there big differences in the way that you manage money? And you see one person could be a problem if you start to commingle funds? It doesn't matter what those reasons are, but you need to define why. And you both need to kind of know and understand what those reasons are. You need to be open and honest when it comes to money because it causes problems as time goes on. Number two is I want you to identify a household CFO. Every single household should have the point person that is going to manage the finances. And they should have a CFO or the person that manages money. Now, what is this person's responsibility?

• 31:12Andrew Giancola?

  The CFO is going to own paying bills. They're going to monitor your cash flow. They are going to run all the automations and make sure your money is getting fully automated. And they're going to flag any issues early so that you can have conversations about this. Now, the big key here is the CFO is not the final decision maker. This is still all shared decision making. Everything is collaborative. Both partners own the big decisions. Both partners own lifestyle trade offs. Both partners are going to own long-term goals. And both partners are going to own values-based spending. This is one owner with two decision makers. So one person is just going to make sure that stuff happens with your money. And the reason why we do it this way is because a lot of times this already is the way that it happens.

• 31:56Andrew Giancola?

  So for example, in my household, I am the person that obviously manages the money. And so in other households, maybe your spouse manages the money or maybe you manage the money. For the most part, if you're listening to this podcast, the likelihood that you manage the money is going to be much, much higher than maybe in most other situations. But whoever handles those dollars, I want to have one owner with two decision makers. Now, the other person can help and they can contribute because you both are going to align before you make any big decisions whatsoever. So again, the household CFO is not a person who actually makes all the decisions. They are just the person that executes and makes sure they all happen. Three is I want you to choose your budgeting philosophy. This matters more than a lot of the tools that you use.

• 32:38Andrew Giancola?

  You need to understand kind of how you are going to spend your money and you need to align on this. A lot of money fights happen because people do not align on their budgeting philosophy and how they're going to spend money. And so you want to say to yourself, okay, well, are we going to do a zero-based budget? Are we going to use a budgeting app? How are we going to do this? Now, a strong default for most of you is I highly recommend if you're in a relationship to automate your finances as much as possible. It reduces friction, it reduces stress, and it reduces you having to have a bunch of little money conversations. Because the more you have to talk about the little dumb things, the little spending here and there, the more this is just going to be annoying for the other person. So instead, you want to make sure you automate as much as possible. Then you want to track, don't micromanage the other person, don't micromanage each other.

• 33:21Andrew Giancola?

  You're just tracking to make sure you're on top of your finances and understanding where you're going. And then you want to automate all the important stuff. So automation is the relationship saver, is a lot of times what I say. So your savings, your investments, your fixed bills, your debt payments. We have an entire course inside Master Money Academy called Automate Your Money in a Weekend, literally how to automate your finances over in one weekend. So I'd highly recommend you check that out and join Master Money Academy if you have not already, because that is already inside there as an additional benefit. And then if you get stuck, you can always ask me questions on the weekly coaching calls. Now, a goal is this plan is going to continue to work even when life gets busy. That's your overall goal when it comes to automating your finances. Next, what I want you to do is I want you to define your freedom spending. This is the most fun part.

• 34:06Andrew Giancola?

  We call this the blow fund and some of you longtime podcast listeners are maybe aware of the blow fund and how this works. We've had a lot of people do this inside Master Money Academy as well and say it's been life-changing. But this is going to prevent 90% of money fights in your relationship is making sure you have the blow fund in place. How does this work? Well, what you're going to do is define freedom spending rules. So what my wife and I do is we decide on a certain amount of money every single month that we can put aside and just blow it on whatever we want. And so when we first started this out, I was much more motivated with the finances than my wife was. My wife didn't really want to do all this. Extra stuff. She felt like it was restrictive. She felt like managing money was very difficult, and she did not want to deal with it whatsoever. And so when we started this process,

• 34:50Andrew Giancola?

  I set up these blow funds and it just boom relieved all of her stress and worry because she had cash on hand that she could just blow on whatever she wants. If she wanted to go shopping, she could go shopping. If she wanted to spend it on, you know, just random frivolous things that she wanted, she could go and do that. And if I wanted to go and spend money frivolously on some random stuff, I could go and do that. No questions asked. You cannot tell the other person how they can spend their blow fund. You cannot tell the other person how they can spend their money in that fund. Instead, you have cash on hand that you could blow on whatever you want. If I want to go buy myself a brand new driver so I can hit that golf ball in the water one more time, then I'm going to go ahead and do that. If she wants to go out and buy some brand new shoes, she can go and do that. The blow fund is to give you freedom, flexibility,

• 35:34Andrew Giancola?

  and reduce all of those fights so that you do not have to worry about this. It removes guilt and it preserves autonomy and it eliminates all the nitpicking. And nitpicking is where your relationship is going to really suffer with money. And so you want to make sure you eliminate that as much as possible. If one person in a relationship is less motivated about this than you are, I would highly recommend to you to give them more. Not if you're going to resent it, don't do it that way. But if you're willing to, hey, I want to take some of these extra dollars and put them towards freedom and that's my goal because I understand compound interest and I want to buy freedom. That is my biggest overall goal, then go ahead and do that. But give the other person some freedom and flexibility to actually enjoy life and enjoy those dollars. It's going to make your entire financial life that much easier. So define the rules, define how much each one of you would get, and then kind of go from there.

• 36:19Andrew Giancola?

  Now, what I don't want you to do is someone could come up and say, oh, you're just going to tell me how much I can spend every single month. That's not the goal whatsoever. This is just the money that you can blow, no questions asked. If you start to have to spend money on bigger decisions, you want to make sure you're having conversations about that. You want to make sure you're talking about that. And you want to make sure you're thinking through that. That is why it's really, really important. Now, step six is we want to make sure that we are having regular money meetings. This is the thing that we have taught people inside Master Money Academy, where they say, I cannot believe how much stress this has relieved in our relationship just by setting up these monthly Meetings and setting up regular money meetings. Now, what are you going to do on these money meetings? Well, I'm going to give you a quick agenda right here that you can talk through and some of the things that you can go through.

• 37:02Andrew Giancola?

  What I want you to do is also think through, hey, how long are these going to be? And how frequently are these going to be? So here's what you're going to do, and this is a simple money meeting agenda. Okay, are bills and systems working? Yeah, everything's working. Check. That could take five minutes. Are we on track? We did all of our goals for this month. We're on track. Are any upcoming changes coming up? Hey, here's a great example of this. Okay, so my son just turned five this month. Okay, and so we had to make sure, hey, we're managing dollars for his upcoming birthday party. We got to go get the bounce house because he wanted the bounce house. We got to make sure we have enough, you know, for the food and his presents and all those different things. Well, that's an expense that could pop up that is not normal every single month.

• 37:45Andrew Giancola?

  And so you want to make sure, hey, we got some of these expenses popping up. Let's just make sure we have enough cash on hand so that we can take care of those things. Or maybe you have a trip coming up and you know, you need some additional spending money or additional cash on hand in order to take care of that trip. Or maybe you have family coming into town. So you want to make sure you have enough budget in there for your eating out expenses or your food budget, whatever else it is. There could be anything in life that pops up that you know is coming. And you just want to make sure that you have that in there. And then I want you each to talk through one big win and then one concern. That's all you got to do. This takes about 20 to 30 minutes every single time. And it's really, really helpful when you have these conversations is talking about those wins, talking about a concern and just talking through it. This concern is not you did this.

• 38:27Andrew Giancola?

  This concern is going to be more so a collaborative effort to make sure you get on the same page when it comes to money. Now, step seven, this is going to help you tremendously when it comes to fights and nitpicking as well. Is I want you to come up with decision rules. Decision rules between the two of you on how you are going to spend on big decisions. So if a dollar amount is under a certain dollar amount, you can make this decision individually. So let's say it's under a hundred bucks unless it's like groceries or something like that. Then just make the decision individually to buy it or not. So you don't have to just keep calling each other or texting each other every second about a big purchase. But if it's over a certain amount. Money, it's gotta be a joint decision. So maybe if it's under 250, you're just good. Hey, go ahead and buy it.

• 39:08Andrew Giancola?

  But if it's over 250, then we need to have a conversation about this because this is going to eat into our budget for the month. Those are the types of things that you want to talk through. And once you have those rules in place, if people are falling outside those boundaries, then you got to figure out why and why they're not committing to the relationship and the way that you have set up these boundaries. And then any big life changes, any changes that you want to happen within the relationship or your long-term goals. You want to make sure that you are both on the same page when it comes to that. And so you always, always, always discuss those big life changes. And so what I would do is just create a one cheater that you both look at and you both have available. Maybe it's just a Google Doc inside both of your phones. But the one cheater is just the rules for the road, meaning the house money rules and the way that we're going to think about this.

• 39:51Andrew Giancola?

  And so you can have the spending boundaries, the saving priorities in there. You can have the decision rules and the conflict rules. How do we resolve conflict if there is a conflict? How do we think about this? Do we give ourselves, you know, two weeks to think about it and to come back and have this conversation? How do we want to make sure that we resolve that and keep this short? Keep it a one pager so that you can think about this. So with this system, what did we just do? Well, one, we built the system, meaning we put the system into place where we built the dream. And we have this dream here and we're looking at this dream, our dream life. And I want you to use that dream life as your why, the engine as to why you are doing what you're doing. Number two, we built the system and we made sure that we had the system in place in order to define, hey, how are we going to manage our money?

• 40:36Andrew Giancola?

  How are we going to spend our money? Who is going to be responsible for every single dollar? Who is going to be responsible for where our dollars are going? And how are we going to think about this step by step? And then number three is then you're letting the money, then you're automating this and letting money support the life that you actually want. And once you unlock this, once you get the ball rolling on this, it can absolutely change your life. Listen, if you are watching on YouTube or Spotify or even Apple Podcasts here in the future and there is comments below, I want you to comment down below that you're going to do this. You're going to get the ball started. You're going to have one of the best relationships. Relationships out there when it comes to managing money. Because when you start to think about this as a team, and when you start to build wealth as a team, your life will change forever.

• 41:22Andrew Giancola?

  And I cannot recommend this enough. Now, one of the other things that I would say is that as you start to do this, I would recommend if you're using a tool like Monarch Money, or you're using another tool, I would highly recommend that you do the five-minute drill together. Meaning if you don't know what the five-minute drill is, when you start to get this system put into place, you can look at where your dollars are going and together have a conversation. Hey, this is where our money went today. It's usually like three to four to five to six transactions, depending on how your household runs and how many things you have going on. These are the transactions we had today. I'm just categorizing these so that you could see them. And it's a very easy way to think through this. The CFO needs to go through those. And if they have questions, you can have conversations about that to keep it open and honest. And if you do this for a month, if you both are kind of tracking the expenses for a month, you're going to get a very good idea of then, when you have your money meeting,

• 42:07Andrew Giancola?

  how to start having a conversation about what needs to go where. So if you're all in and you're someone who is going to be doing this, I want to hear from you down below. And if you have questions on this, I want to hear from you down below in the comments as well to hear exactly what you do. Now, if there are some things that you do in your relationship that help you when it comes to managing money, we'd also love to hear those in the comments down below because I want us to use these comments to help each other. I want us to use these comments to give each other feedback and help each other as we start to work through this together. Because as wealth builders, as people out there who are working towards building wealth, we need to talk about money more. And we need to talk about the psychology side of money, which this is mastering psychology right here, is making sure you can master your relationship.

• 42:50Andrew Giancola?

  There is no worse place to be than to be fighting about money all the time. The stress, the anxiety, the weight of that can bleed into every other area of your life. So instead, let's get together. Let's start working towards that common goal so that we can feel that financial freedom together. Because that is going to strengthen your relationship more than anything else. Listen, I hope you guys got a ton of value out of this episode. And if you did, I would be so thankful if you left a five star rating review and send it to people that you know. Send it to couples that you know would need help with this process because I think it's really, really important. And you could really save a lot of relationships just by sharing this episode with other people.

• 43:31Andrew Giancola?

  Also, if you want to learn with master classes, just like how we've taught this here. And we dove deeper into the master class in Master Money Academy. But if you want to learn just like this on a monthly basis about different topics, like for example, this month, we're talking about taxes. And so if you want to learn deeper, just like this, I would highly encourage you to join Master Money Academy. And podcast listeners, I'm going to give you a seven day free trial. So that you can see behind the curtain and see why Master Money Academy is going to be the perfect solution for you and your family. Listen, Master Money Academy costs less than a cup of coffee on a weekly basis, especially with the link down below in that free trial. And it's going to transform your financial life. So things like this will just reduce your stress, reduce your anxiety.

• 44:12Andrew Giancola?

  And when you get stuck, you get to ask me questions live every single week. So I cannot thank you guys enough for listening to this podcast episode. My goal is to bring you as much value as I possibly can, and I hope we did that today. Make sure you're subscribed and can't wait to see you on the next episode.

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