Wharton’s Corinne Low on How to Get More Life Out of Your Money, Time, and Career SB1913

Most of us are optimizing a number, whether it’s a retirement balance or a job title, and almost never stop to ask what it’s for. Wharton economist Corinne Low measures how people really trade time, money, and love, and she has a short exercise that shows how little of your ideal life depends on that number. Joe Saul-Sehy and guest co-host Anna Allem, CFP, put her ideas to work on careers, partnerships, and the awkward conversations in between. You’ll hear why a house can act as insurance in a marriage, why your job won’t love you back, and how to walk into a hard conversation holding real leverage. What You’ll Walk Away With A two-minute exercise that shows what your money is actually forWhy almost nobody in that picture is working long weeks, and what that says about your calendarWhat economists mean by “utility,” and why it’s richer than happinessThe case for “having it almost,” and why dropping perfect can raise satisfactionBATNA, a negotiation term worth knowing, and how to build yours before a hard conversation at work or at homeThe coin flip study: why people nudged out of a stuck situation ended up happierWhy buying a home can act as insurance in a partnership, and who that lets take a step backWhy your job is a tool for converting time into money, and why that’s good newsQuick-fire answers on splitting bills 50/50, who gets the last word on big purchases, and whether prenups are only for the wealthyOne thing to put on your calendar this week that makes you richer without earning a dollarWhy This Matters Now Most of us are working hard toward a finish line we’ve never described out loud. That makes it easy to keep climbing, keep saving, and keep wondering why the finish line keeps moving. If you worry about making a move you can’t undo, or you feel like everyone else got a rulebook you missed, this conversation is a friendly way to decide what you’re building before you build more of it. From the Basement Doug reveals that Mrs. Neighbor Doug exists, which stuns everyone in mom’s basement, and then explains why Joe’s mom’s negotiating style involves a threat to cancel the shrimp appetizer at The Sizzler. Joe also shares a story about a rare Venetian grape that only thrives because of stress. Resources Mentioned Corinne Low at Wharton https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/corlow/: faculty page with her researchHaving It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours https://www.labyrinthbooks.com/having-it-all/: Corinne Low’s book, in paperback“Collateralized Marriage” and “Winning the Bread and Baking It Too”: two of her research papers discussed in the interview See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  It's easy to grin when your ship comes in and you've got the stock market beat. But the man worthwhile is the man who can smile when his shorts are too tight in the seat.

• 1:04Speaker 02

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• 1:12Speaker 03

  Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug, and we're all trying to build a bigger stack. But here's the big question, what for? If you want more life, more money, and better work, today's show is for you because we're going to answer those questions with Wharton professor and economist, Dr. Corinne Lowe. And now, two people who you will believe have got that sweet life of podcasting down to a science. It's Joe and Anna.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  I just never know when to stop. Allo.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Thanks, Doug.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  You just get rolling and your tongue just keeps moving.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  I'm sure that's the way Anna, you introduce yourself at parties, too.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  Yes, I'm gonna say to like hit my back to like get me to stop. Knock it out of me.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  Happy Wednesday, stackers. We're super happy you're here. This is the Stacking Benjamin Show. Man, do we have an interview I've been so waiting to do. Dr. Corinne Lowe is here. And if you've ever thought, you know, I'm saving all this money. What am I doing it for? Which I don't know if it's like this anymore, Anna, but back when I was a financial planner, people were like, yeah, let's just talk about saving. Like, it was so difficult to talk about your goals and to prioritize your goals and to actually have the money meet what you value that those discussion and those discussions so valuable, but people didn't want to have that talk.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Definitely. Yeah, it's a hard conversation. Like, you might not even be in a place where you really understand what it is at that point. It's an evolving conversation always, and it's going to change as you continue in your financial plan.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  The other thing I love about Dr. Lowe's work, which I saw about a year ago for the first time, and we've been chasing her down ever since, just all of the squeezes that we have as a family, that, you know, we go through this part that's kind of the messy middle, Anna, where you might have parents that are beginning to age, you might have young children at home, you have a boss that wants more from you, you might be married and have a spouse that thinks you're not spending enough time with them, you have this huge squeeze in your life. How do you survive the squeeze? She also talks about that.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Not the good kind.

• 3:41Speaker 05

  No, not the good kind. Yes, not, definitely not the good kind.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  No comment to that.

• 3:50Speaker 05

  On today's show, we go deeper into what makes money important. We're going to apply an economist's practical lens to money, to work, and to relationships, and ask that bigger question beneath the numbers. What are you trying to make your money or your time do for you? Dr. Corinne Lowe is a professor at Wharton. She teaches an award-winning class there on navigating careers. She's been doing that for over a decade, and now she's going to help all of you stackers do better in your career, life, home, and meld the three together. So maybe we actually get better home life. You know, I don't like the phrase, Anna, I don't like the phrase work-life balance,

• 4:33Speaker 05

  because I agree with a lot of our guests that are like, balance is baloney. There's no such thing. But actually, taking care of these different pieces so that they all work together, I think, is really important.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  I feel like people hate that term now. I think the balance is creating it to be what you picture it to be. So it doesn't have to be that like it's everything in your life is completely balanced out. But what does it look like to spend time with your kids for you? It might not be the same amount of time that you're spending with work, but what does that look like? And how are we achieving that? But it's, again, it's not going to be balanced. And nowadays, like, everything's flowing into each other all the time. So it's like, how do we create these boundaries so that we are somewhat in that balance that you want? I have found, like, obviously, I'm navigating this a lot as like a young mom, and I'm trying to figure out what that means for me.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  And so I have a picture in my head, and obviously, it goes out of balance every so often, but I'm trying to get to that point that I'm looking at.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, like so many things in life, this notion of balance is what you make of it. Or in other words, you get to determine what balanced is. It isn't somebody else's external definition of it. It's eight hours at work, eight hours with your family, and eight hours sleeping. You get to determine that. And one of the major lightbulb moments I had was I was at a baseball game entertaining clients, and they were on their phone, like doing work stuff on the phone. I kind of joked about it, like, hey, man, we're at the ballgame. His reply was really enlightening to me, which was, this device is what allows me to be at the ballgame right now. Like, I never thought of it that way. It's, it used to be like, oh, you got to put all that stuff down and just focus and be present on the thing.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  Instead, it was, I would have said no. Instead, I got to say yes.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Sometimes it's right. Yeah, like when I've gone on vacation with the boys, and we go to these beautiful, probably go hiking, or we go to these beautiful places, I have really tried to enforce, look, you're going to go off separately, spend 30 minutes, I'm going to keep your phone, and just go sit on that rock on the shore and just take some time to do that. And those are important moments, but in general, we all get so wrapped up in that. It can't always be like that. There are times when the, the being able to work at 8 o'clock at night from home is what allowed you to come home at 5 or 4 to make dinner, or to, you know, do this other thing after school. And that's all part of the balance. The fact that you're working at 8 isn't necessarily an imbalance.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Don't forget that you got to come home at 3:30 or 4, pick them up from daycare or whatever it is, and having to work at 8 o'clock is what allowed that. And I kind of like that idea that it, it fluctuates, it flows, the balance does.

• 7:18Speaker 05

  I do. I want to finish this conversation after Dr. Lowe, who's upstairs talking to mom right now, after she comes down to the basement and visits with us. You can see where she's going and how we always fight with this stuff. And there's some other stuff going on that she's going to get into, which is the fact that, well, I hope she gets into it. The 1950s and 1960s were a long time ago, but we still, in our heads, envision this kind of family unit that is vastly changed. And from an economist's perspective, just looking at the numbers around what's really happening in our life versus what we think we want to, sometimes this fiction that we have of the way things should be versus the way life really is also gets in the way.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  Plus, she's, she's got a great piece on negotiating out of some of this. So if you're in a bad situation where people want you to be something that you're not, whether it's at home or at work, how do you negotiate your way out of that? We'll talk about that. We'll also unpack it, Anna and Doug and I afterwards. But for now, Dr. Corinne Lowe, coming down to the basement. I really can't wait for this interview. Well, you may know that chaos is the name of the game here in mom's basement, what with guests coming in and out, Cooper the cat getting in the way, Doug being, well, being Doug. The holidays make it even worse because it's all about food and big meals. And the problem is, prepping for those takes forever. But what about those between meals, right?

• 8:45Speaker 05

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  Those are so good. They're crafted with lean proteins, fiber-packed fruit and veggies, and healthy fats. Try those out. Your heart and your taste buds will thank you. For Cheryl and I, Factor has been a great way for us to stay busy and focus on family life and beating mom at card games. I use Factor, and you should too. So let's eat real, stackers. Head to factormeals.com/sb50off. Use code SB50OFF. And you know what? You're going to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until December 31, 2026.

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• 10:28Speaker 05

  Stackers, listen to this direct quote from today's guest. I can tell you statistically whether you should buy a house before you get married. It's not about money. It's about insurance for the divorce. And okay, we, we need to back up because I did not have my house's divorce insurance on my bingo card today. We're joined by Dr. Corinne Lowe. I'm super happy that you're here in your mom's basement with us. Thank you so much.

• 10:58Speaker 06

  Thanks for having me over to your mom's basement around this rickety card table.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  It is that, that line, that line obviously shocked me. And there's a lot of your work that just opened my eyes. So I can't wait to get into this, but you're a wart and economist. You've spent your career studying poverty, studying hard trade offs. At what point did you turn that same lens on your own marriage and go, wait, I, I could run the numbers on this. Like I've got the skillset to look at this in economic terms.

• 11:31Speaker 06

  I think what's interesting is I've always been fascinated in this trade off that women make between kind of career and family. And so I was working on that during my dissertation before I had kids myself, before I was like worrying about the fertility time horizon. I wasn't in that phase of my life yet. And it was almost the other way around where almost each thing that I researched started coming true in my own life because those experiences are so universal for women. And then that became motivation for me to dive back into it with the experiences I was having and look at what the data said and just see the way, you know, no matter how smart we think we are, no matter if you're an economist who studies career, family trade offs, that there are just some of these forces that are so strong, that are structural in

• 12:16Speaker 06

  the economy, that you get kind of pulled into these highly gendered traps. I think it's a really universal conversation and I think it's a conversation that men should be listening to every bit as much as women. So I'm really excited to talk to the stackers out there because it's a conversation we all need to have about, you know, what do we need to do to have it all?

• 12:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, half our audience is men. And as I was reading your work, I was just thinking how much we all need to read this. These statistics, these incredible statistics that you share are so revealing and frankly so helpful to having a healthy relationship, whether it's a relationship at home or at work, and we'll talk about both. But before we go deep, and I know this is going to be difficult. If you had a one sentence version of really what you found, what would that be? What would that sentence be like?

• 13:08Speaker 06

  I'll start with time use. I think is really interesting is that I think the one sentence version is that we've had a revolution in women's time use and we haven't had a revolution in men's time use. And that's leaving us in some very hard situations that now couples are navigating individually, but it's really a bigger picture societal thing, which is that you have women enter the labor force, start to take on the same roles as men in a lot of ways, often start to bring home as much money as men, but you don't have any kind of a restructuring or any kind of change in societal norms that allows men to step into the home front and to kind of feel affirmed in their masculinity by doing that. And so I think that would be my one sentence summary is this asymmetric gender revolution.

• 13:48Speaker 05

  Well, and also by the same token, I mean, I like that you focused on the men in our audience, but the women then feel the squeeze, right? As I'm adding all of these things that maybe the average stereotypical mom in the 50s didn't have, it's a whole new world, Corinne.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  Absolutely. And so that's exactly, I mean, I was saying, you know, I think it's important that we talk about men and masculinity, but where that's leaving us, it's leaving both people in a bad position because you have women who are winning the bread and baking it too. That's the title of one of my papers. And then you have men who I see in my data might be the lower earner in the household, but they're still actually working more hours a week because they don't have an alternative role of what does this look like to kind of be, you know, maybe be a provider in the household if it's not just through going to work. And then you have on the other side, his wife, maybe she's a nurse, she's earning more money than him, right? And the data I can see their wages and she's earning more money than him, but she's working fewer hours because she's still the one to, you know, pick up the kids from daycare, to

• 14:47Speaker 06

  put the kids to bed, to pack the lunches, to call the pediatrician. And it's our roles are incompatible with our realities right now.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  You had a statistic, a graph that I liked. And maybe I'll ask your publisher if we can just include this in the show notes, but it's a graph of how much work over the years, the woman does around the house, the household chores that the woman does and how that's changed over the years and how it's changed for men. And for men, it has changed very little. And as a woman's feeling the squeeze, it's gone down, but it still is much, much more than a man is doing in the house. And I actually, it's funny, I look at my house, I work from home. I take care of a lot of things and we'll get into this, but I think Cheryl and I do a good job of taking care of each other. I would still put the things that she does at home, even though she has a very busy career as ahead of me.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  It did not shock me. It was horrifying to see it in person, but it did not shock me. But with that basis, that we've got a lot of things that we need to figure out, we could see where some of the conflicts in our relationship, not just at home, but also where we're come from because of this, let's begin where you begin, that our lives, you say, have this hidden scoreboard, like a video game. What, what we through that, what is the score really?

• 16:09Speaker 06

  For a lot of people who are stackers, you're always kind of thinking about maximizing something. And a lot of times you might be thinking about maximizing money or that retirement account balance. But I'm an economist and when we think about what individuals are maximizing, individuals are very different from firms. Firms value money. They value profit, right? The firm's health is determined by a line that's dollars and cents. Individuals actually aren't like that at all. What do individuals value? Well, economists had to give a name to it and we call it utility, which is sort of like happiness, right? It's like, okay, we don't actually eat money. We don't actually get joy for money. We value what money brings us, but it's a little bit richer than happiness.

• 16:52Speaker 06

  And I think that's why it's such a great concept for people to know, because in utility terms, we could see that setting limits with your toddler who then throws a temper tantrum, that could be a positive utility decision, even though it doesn't feel super joyful. Or more meaningfully, sitting by the side of a dying family member crying, we wouldn't say that's maximizing happiness, but we understand as human beings, that's something we value. That's utility. So utility encompasses all of those things. And if you think about utility is what you're maximizing, it's very clarifying because then when you're making financial decisions, you're making them in service of the utility they will ultimately bring you.

• 17:32Speaker 06

  So it's yes, we're maximizing the retirement account, but that's so I can have these things that I value that are important to me when I retire.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. For what? I mean, the big question is for what? What am I putting the money away for? Yeah. As I'm reading this, of course, I start thinking to myself, right? Like, what am I solving for? What are, what are my big things? And if I asked you yourself, Corinne, as somebody that's studied this way longer and more than I have, what your own utility function is optimizing for, could you answer that? Because it was a struggle for me.

• 18:04Speaker 06

  Yeah. So I don't think it's simple to answer and is complex. It doesn't have like a one single answer because as I said, it's not quite joy. It's meaning and that's so many different things. But the way that I ask people to figure this out for themselves is to picture a world without constraints. Economists call this unconstrained maximization, right? So if you could actually have everything you want, so you're a mega billionaire and I want you to picture what your life looks like, what surrounds you and how you're spending your days. And all of that, that is utility. And so in your picture, there's some things that you can buy with money. Somebody listening had a yacht in the picture. Somebody listening had a newly renovated basement.

• 18:46Speaker 06

  There's some things you can buy with money and there's other things that you might've noticed that were having time to pursue an artistic hobby I haven't gotten to do for a while, taking care of my body, spending time in nature, spending time with loved ones, which you can't buy with money. And if I ask people very honestly, even the people listening who like love their job and they say like, oh, my career brings me so much meaning. I love my job. Ask people honestly, was anybody working 60 hours a week in that picture? I bet nobody would say yes, which again clarifies the for what, that our career is actually only a means to an end. Our ultimate goal of our job is for it to pay us in money.

• 19:28Speaker 06

  I describe it as a technology for converting your time into money. It's an ATM that you can put your time and effort into and get money out of. And hopefully that exercise lets you picture what are you maximizing? You're not going to get all of those things because in the real world we face constraints, we face trade offs, but your goal is to get more of everything in your picture and it's a holistic picture. So it means if we just pursue the things that you can buy with money, we're going to lose out on the things that you actually needed time to really enjoy that were equally a part of your picture.

• 20:03Speaker 05

  Two things fascinated me as I went through your exercise. The first one was, and I think you asked us to like, begin by just listing six things fairly quickly. And I list six and only two of them have anything to do with money. One is educating as many people as possible about financial literacy, just because I do find it fun. I find my career very fun. So that was on the six, kind of something I find a lot of utility in getting to speak to people like you. Like it's super fun to do this and also joyful when people tell me that we changed their life. And the other one was experience the world, not just see the world, but get to meet people in different places around the world.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  Cause I find that as we meet more people, I find my worldview changes and becomes better. But the other four had nothing to do with money. And that was the big aha, I'm like, we're, you know, on a daily basis, we're telling people how to do a Roth IRA conversion. And yet four things could be solved without even doing that.

• 21:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know. That's exactly what's so interesting, right? Is that it's so easy for humans to think of ourselves as mini firms that we're maximizing revenue. We're maximizing profit when that's not actually the purpose of our lives at all. And so I think it's really important to think about money as a tool. And you want to take good care of your money, absolutely, because it is a tool to get so many different things. But you also can't let your pursuit of financial wellness interfere with your pursuit of this more holistic wellbeing of overall utility. And I think that's where people can get stuck, especially, and this was me, if you have some old narratives from your past,

• 21:42Speaker 06

  where you felt insecure about money at some point, or you grew up poor and you're kind of trying to like climb out of that hole. You're trying to fill that wound as you're like, okay, if I just work a little bit harder and I get a little bit more money, then I'm going to feel safe. But if you really think about what utility is for you, it's so easy to miss out on the things in that picture that you could literally be doing right now, which means if we define true wealth as having the things in your picture, you could make yourself richer right now by just setting aside some time to do one of those things in your picture that you feel like you're not getting to do enough, right? And that would actually make you richer and you don't have to go out and work harder or get a side hustle to do that.

• 22:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. When the definition of richer starts to change, that's a powerful thing. And I think obviously then number two, then stackers, after you write down these things is then look at your calendar. Like Corinne, I think that's what you're saying. Look at your calendar and say, am I living these? Am I actually going after the things that I'm telling myself are important? And for me, I find often that I'm not chasing the things that I'm telling myself are the most important. The second thing that struck me as you were talking is how different yours would be than mine are. And I grasped that right away, but then I think about the fact that we talked about gender differences at the top of this discussion.

• 23:00Speaker 05

  But in any relationship, whether it's with our boss, a coworker, a child, whatever it might be, in any relationship, just having that discussion is one we rarely have.

• 23:12Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I tell young people this, you want to find out if the person that you're dating, if you're aligned on utility goals. Because if the person that you're dating says, oh, well, for me prestige and being the boss and being high up in the hierarchy is super important. I mean, it's part of the utility. Well, that person's going to want to put a lot of their time into the job and the career space, because that's something that they value as kind of an end in itself. Whereas if you say, well, no, I actually only see my job as a means to an end. And I really value spending time with family and having kids and investing in those kids. You're actually going to find an incompatibility that you didn't realize you had. If you just stick with the more surface level question of how many kids do you want, right?

• 23:53Speaker 06

  I would both want two kids. Great. But actually we have very different values about how we really want to spend our time and how it converts into that deeper utility. So I totally agree. It is unique to everyone, but I also think that's one of the really neat things about spending time thinking about your utility function. Is it frees you up from comparing yourself to your colleagues or your neighbors or your friends? Because everyone's maximizing something different. So of course there's somebody at your firm getting more promotions than you. Or of course there's somebody making more money than you, but their values, their utility function might not be the same as you.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  Well, and this, this leads to people feel like they're failing at having it all. Everybody wants it all and we feel the squeeze, but you have this phrase, having it all most. My good friend Paula Pant has a show called, You Could Afford Anything, Just Not Everything. And this seems to be kind of along the same lines. You could have it all most. What does this reframe of having it all most actually make people feel better instead of worse? That you're not going to get everything.

• 24:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. I think one of the things was going through the squeeze myself was just realizing how much that pursuit of perfection is part of what undermines our ultimate goal of utility is that if you're constantly judging yourself against this perfect vision where we are going to be an amazingly accomplished eighties career woman, and we're going to be an Instagrammable trad wife where everything in our homes looks absolutely perfect, right? We're always going to feel like we're not enough and then we're going to be dissatisfied even with the things that we really value. So why would I want less utility for the same amount of stuff? So I think this reframe of like, when you're going through the squeeze, when there's so many things to juggle,

• 25:36Speaker 06

  that life is going to be messy and imperfect, that life is going to involve trade offs. That in order to have something that you really value, which like, let's say that's time with your kids. Maybe it means giving up having a perfectly clean house or in order to really reach this career milestone. That's really important to you. Maybe that means giving up some time with your friends. And so once you understand, look, those trade offs are there, that's what it is. That doesn't mean that you don't have it all. It doesn't mean you're losing or failing at the game of life. That just is what it is. And so to me, that having it all most idea was kind of a way of capturing that and giving yourself permission to reframe what this means, because if you understand how our time is getting so squeezed from all sides.

• 26:17Speaker 06

  And we didn't talk about, we talked about this incomplete gender revolution, but we didn't talk about for those people who are parents out there, the way that parenting time has skyrocketed and how that's also put enormous squeeze on people who are parents. If you understand that we're getting squeezed from all sides, our career wants more from us, our kids need more from us. The gender roles haven't changed at home. It just doesn't add up. Something has to give. And so just making peace with the fact that like, okay, it's going to be a little bit messy. It's going to be a little bit just in time. It's going to be a little bit DIY, but that's my all. That's what's bringing me utility and I'm going to enjoy it instead of constantly judging it and denigrating it because it's not perfect.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  Speaking of giving things up, you are very vulnerable at the beginning of this project. And you talk about your own marriage and about how you were very fearful of becoming a single parent. We do the same thing in our career. Often we're afraid of being unemployed, but I'm in a job that might be asking too much. Or there could be a ton of friction, even with friendships. Sometimes we have friendships where it just is not a good deal. I want to go much deeper into your work and this idea that you present called your BATNA.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  This is apparently an econ term. A lot of our stackers don't know anything about it, but I thought this was a really important concept. Can you explain what your BATNA is?

• 27:40Speaker 06

  Yes. This comes from a negotiation science and a BATNA is B A T N A, your best alternative to negotiated agreement. This is something that's so important to understand because any, you could think of basically any relationship, a marriage, a job, a friendship as a negotiation where the status quo is you're going to continue that relationship. You're going to continue to engage in that business partnership and whatever it might be. But if you ever feel like you are starting to get a bad deal in one of those relationships, it's really important to make yourself not fearful, to understand and even to build up your BATNA, your best alternative to negotiated agreement.

• 28:23Speaker 06

  So for somebody who's in a marriage that's not working, it might mean actually thinking about what would it look like? If I were to be a single parent, what would the supports that I would need to put in place? What would I do financially? And not coming into those asks then within the relationship from a place of fear, but coming in from a place of strength. And if you do decide you want to continue and you want to save that marriage, you're coming in and you're saying, I actually know I can do this on my own, but I want to do it with you, but here's what needs to change.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  Can I share one statistic that surprised me? You found this out yourself that single mothers actually sleep more than married mothers.

• 29:04Speaker 06

  And they do less housework. And I was shocked that this was true. I tell the, a woman who had gone through this recently before me said, Corinne, you think it's going to be harder, but it's going to be easier because when you're married, you make this big elaborate family meal. But when you're a single mom, you feed the kids an apple and a cheese stick, and then you eat whatever you were going to eat for dinner anyway. And that is so true. It's like you kind of give yourself permission to stop playing this role and trying to make everything perfect. Because you know, as a single mom, that it just doesn't add up. But the data shows single moms, they sleep more, they do less housework. Because often in a marriage that isn't working, you've fallen into a pattern where instead of really dividing things equally, actually that mom is carrying the load for everybody in the household.

• 29:48Speaker 06

  That's one piece of dispelling the fear, but I think the same thing with a job. If you're going to go in and have a conversation with your boss. Price yourself in the market first. Go look at what else is out there. Get your CV up into shape so that you are going in from a position of strength.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. How does that change the conversation then?

• 30:06Speaker 06

  It really changes how you feel, right? When you go in from that position of vulnerability, that like I'm asking for a favor. And I think in particular, women have a tendency to do this, to always feel like, oh, I have to ask for a favor. I have to like, you know, try to get somebody to do something. And instead of coming in from a little bit of a position of deserving this, the thing about developing your batna, because it's not just knowing your batna, it's developing it. And so what I mean is it's reactivating for a job, it's reactivating the contact you haven't had. It's having the coffee chat with somebody at a company who might be interested in hiring you. It's calling up a recruiter and seeing what your price is. So you're developing your batna so that then you can come in from a position of strength. You can say, look, I actually know my worth and I really want to work with you to make sure

• 30:51Speaker 06

  that I can stay in this role and I can continue to grow and I can continue to thrive and I can get that worth. All of this is wrapped up in this idea that you mentioned at the beginning of this section, that human beings have a tendency to stay in stuff that's not working. So there's a study by economist Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame, where he showed that if you have people think about a decision, a two-way decision, and then flip a coin, and then you randomize whether they make their own decision or whether they follow the coin flip. When they follow the coin flip and you survey them later, they end up happier. Okay?

• 31:27Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 31:27Speaker 06

  Because people will tend on their own to stay stuck in the status quo more than they should. And the coin, you know, pushes them out of the status quo.

• 31:36Speaker 05

  Oh, that's fascinating.

• 31:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. So people have status quo bias and we tend to think the unknown is scarier. So we don't want to try ending the marriage. That might be an extreme example, but we also don't want to try changing jobs. We don't want to try moving cities. And sometimes when we do it, we find possibilities that we couldn't have even known were there.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  It ends up being far better. Like I think of some of these big moves that I've made during my career, I'd ended up, the grass wasn't greener, but it was so much different and so much more fun and allowed me to be so much more alive. I like being a financial planner. I love talking to you here far more in my basement than when I was a financial planner. I would have never done that had I not had the confidence to do that. And I could just feel how when I look at my batna, I begin to get the confidence behind my voice and behind my posture. I mean, I think it, it reveals itself in a lot of different ways during that conversation with the boss.

• 32:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think you're exactly right. That's what people should be thinking about, right? Is thinking about you're not stuck, you're never stuck in a situation. When you feel stuck, figure out what your best alternative is. And then if you decide to stay, you're making a really active choice to say, oh, I actually really checked out the alternative path. And this is actually better for me. So I'm making an affirmative choice and I'm giving myself back the agency.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  You know, the self-talk though, Corinne, that we give ourselves. We're like, oh, I chose this person because of love, or I chose this job because of love. You have a whole chapter about this called Love is the Epsilon. That sounds, in some ways, it's romantic. In another way, it comes across as cold, like love is like a rounding air, right?

• 33:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 05

  Defend that phrase. Like, like you say that we don't really choose out of real love anyway.

• 33:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, the phrase comes from when I was giving a presentation of my dissertation, where I showed people were kind of matching based on income and based on essentially age, with what I call reproductive capital. Somebody raised their hand in the audience and was like, do economists really believe this? Do you really believe people match on these factors? What about love? Right? And I showed a graph and the graph shows, you know, people are pretty well matched on these factors. And then there's this noise around that line. And I said, no, love is here. Love is the epsilon. Love is that error term that's why I as an economist can't perfectly predict who you're going to marry, right? It's going to say, most of the time, people, women are married to somebody who's taller than them.

• 34:09Speaker 06

  But sometimes somebody falls in love and you know, they're matched the opposite way. Nicole Kidman was married to Tom Cruise, whatever. That's love. That's the piece I can't predict as an economist. But I found that phrase so helpful because people have a tendency to say, if I talk about thinking about what a partner brings to the table in terms of shared values, in terms of your utility function, people have a tendency to be like, well, that's cold and that's unromantic, right? And they say, well, if I look at the data, people are not just matching on random love. There's a lot of systemic factors. You're much more likely to marry somebody close in age here, much more likely to marry someone if you're a woman who's taller, if you're a man who's shorter, you're much more likely to marry someone who went to a similar school and has a similar education background. It's

• 34:53Speaker 06

  not that you are randomly, you know, pulling people and it's just whoever you love most in the world. So love is there. Love is important. Attraction is important. But those are necessary conditions for a relationship to thrive. They're not sufficient conditions that are going to carry you through the rest of your lives. And that's so important because, you know, speaking now from my 40s, I can tell you that love and attraction change over the course of a relationship and maintaining them is actually very dependent on those systemic factors. When somebody helps you live your best life, have your all, get your utility needs met, you're going to sustain love and attraction a lot more versus when you feel like someone else's goals are in conflict with yours.

• 35:38Speaker 05

  Wow. And actually, you can even apply that to the job, right? You could apply it to your boss. You could apply it to your relationship at work.

• 35:44Speaker 06

  Oh, I want to talk about that for sure. Because people say, I love my job. And again, as I said, when I asked them to picture, what would you do if you were a mega billionaire? Nobody says they'd be working 60 hours a week. People like you who say, I love talking to people, I love educating people, and you get a lot of meaning from your job. And for me too, in doing research and educating people about that research, I get a lot of meaning from my job. If money were no object, do it for like 15 hours a week, maybe 20. And your job does not love you back. If your job goes through downsizing or has a financial crunch, they will lay you off. Love will not keep you there. Okay? You are not actually a family. So I think it's important to be a little bit less romantic about these relationships

• 36:28Speaker 06

  with our jobs and a little bit more transactional. And as I said, think about our job as a technology for converting our time into money. And the better the technology is, you might get meaning along with it, right? You might get fulfillment along with the money. And that's great. Isn't it great if you can convert your time into money and get meaning and fulfillment at the same time? But I think a big mistake is people were, they're getting all that meaning and fulfillment, but they're not getting any money. And then they're putting so much time in that they're missing out on meaning and fulfillment they could be getting by pursuing hobbies or spending time with their kids or with elderly loved ones. I think it's really

• 37:09Speaker 06

  important to take a hard look at your job and say, like, am I getting out what I want, given what I'm putting in?

• 37:16Speaker 05

  I want to take a little detour from this wonderful, kind of straightforward walk we're having. When you're talking about love, you also talk about the dating apps. And I find some of this stuff, Corinne, that you brought up so gross, like just, but the statistics don't lie, right? Stats don't lie. The, don't get me wrong, stats can lie. So I will personally-

• 37:37Speaker 06

  And you can lie with stats. Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, yeah. And I've seen people lie with stats. You have a point about the age penalty on dating apps for women and something around if a woman, and hopefully you can fill this in, because I think it's, if a woman is older than a man by X amount, she needs to make $7,000 more per year that she's older for him to have any interest in her. Like, there's a, there's a math equation to my love.

• 38:06Speaker 06

  Well, that's exactly what I mean, is that when people say like, oh, no, it's all about love. And then I can say like, well, I've run the studies and I can tell you it's not all about love, right? Because if I change people's characteristics, people get a different reaction on dating apps. And so there is, there's some hard-nosed, you know, stats that go into who we're quote attracted to or who we're interested in, right? And the other way as well, right? In that same study, I found that women were more attracted to men the higher their income was, right? And so we are looking for things from a partner that are not just like romance, right? We're looking for a partner that is going to help us meet our life goals. And I guess the kind way of looking at that first statistic was that a lot of this had to do with fertility and reproductive capacity. So I have a friend

• 38:49Speaker 06

  who jokes that she's like, well, I'm 41, but my eggs are 37. So should I put that on the table? You know? Because it's partly about reproductive capacity. If my life goal is to have children, then I want somebody that I know I'm going to be able to have children with. There's a part of our brains that is like the lizard brain that's been trained by evolution to kind of go for certain things. And for women, I think that's sometimes the person who's going to like, kill the wild boar, right? Or protect us. Sometimes that's incompatible with what's actually going to make us utility today. Because, you know, today, there's a lot fewer wild boars, there's a lot fewer, you know, roaming hordes we need to be protected from. But there is a toilet paper roll that needs to be replaced and a hand soap that needs to be refilled.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  Been a long time since I've killed a wild boar for Cheryl, Corinne. But I have changed a toilet paper roll.

• 39:39Speaker 06

  Yes. If you do that, then you know, that's really being a provider today. Okay?

• 39:43Speaker 05

  I don't want to brag, but I might have changed one yesterday. But just saying.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  Normally we stop for Doug's trivia right here, but you know what? We're going to take a quick break from the sponsors to make sure we can keep on, keep it on. We're going to hear from them and then we'll be back with more Dr. Corinlow.

• 40:02Speaker 05

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• 41:31Speaker 05

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• 42:16Speaker 05

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• 45:14Speaker 05

  Let's go back to the line that opened the show. Unpack this. Why is buying a house together basically buying insurance against divorce?

• 45:22Speaker 06

  Yes, this is from a paper that I have called collateralized marriage. If you want a really romantic title. The idea is if you actually look at the history of American marriage, okay? Is that we used to have in the 1940s and 50s, something that economists call specialization, which is that women invested at home and they raised the kids and men were in the formal labor market and they brought home a paycheck. And that exchange, that deal worked as long as the marriage lasted, right? Because the idea is she invests in the kids, the kids go off to college. He's the one earning the paycheck, but he keeps sharing the spoils of his paycheck. Then we had the divorce revolution in the 1970s where suddenly there were women who had done that.

• 46:04Speaker 06

  They had invested in the kids and only he had a career. And somebody like my grandmother left her job, right? She was working as a secretary while my grandpa went to law school. They got married and they had kids. She left that job and she raised the kids. She took care of the house. And these women ended up divorced in their 40s, starting over with minimum wage jobs. And they found out that that bargain they thought they'd entered into was not as long lasting as they thought. And they told their daughters and granddaughters, like, do not let that happen to you. You always have to have a way to support yourself. So with that, this model of specialization collapsed because women had to go into the labor force in order to have a backup career. I call this your money machine. You've got to build up your money machine.

• 46:47Speaker 06

  And then even if you put it in a closet for a few years and it gathers dust, you always have it to kind of spool it back up if you need it. And what we show in this paper is that specialization still can be advantageous. And in fact, we still see it in a lot of high income households. And I don't mean the full specialization of the 1950s. It's not necessarily a stay at home wife and only one person with a career. But it is often the mom being the one to take more parental leave, the mom being the one to work part time sometime during her career. Maybe they both start out at law firms, working 60, 70 hours a week. And then they decide it's better for him to work 80 and make partner and for her to switch into a supporting role at the law firm to switch into recruiting or, you know, something that's not client facing.

• 47:31Speaker 06

  See this in a lot of couples. His income grows and hers doesn't grow as much.

• 47:37Speaker 06

  What you need, if you're going to do this, is really good insurance that you are going to be okay if this marriage doesn't last. And so the paper shows that buying a home serves as that insurance because the home is going to be divided in the case of divorce. And so we see that couples who own homes are more likely to specialize. And again, not that extreme specialization of the past, but are more likely to have a little bit of that safety where she can invest more at home and in the kids and he can invest more in the career. We see it pay off in his career. He actually earns more and we see it pay off in the outcomes that we see for the family.

• 48:10Speaker 05

  They talk about in good movie making, that a good movie has high stakes. They're not just fighting like some of these superhero movies drive me crazy because they're fighting and I'm like, okay, when this 15 minutes gets over, you know? So I generally don't like those, but when the characters have to do something because of the stakes, I feel like what you're saying is the equivalent here, the house is stakes. We have some real stakes here in this marriage and rather than just separate, we are going to have to figure this out.

• 48:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, and we're both showing, right? That we have skin in the game and therefore it also nudges you to say, when times get hard, let's figure out how to renegotiate our terms rather than turning to that bet, right? Because now, you know, you kind of, you have more invested in that joint capital. And so I do think it's a powerful thing to think about as a couple. When you make a decision, like one person taking a step back from the labor market and you think that that is jointly beneficial for the couple, to think about what insurance does she have? Does she have insurance in terms of financial wellbeing? Not just in the case of divorce, but death? Disability, AI taking the husband's job?

• 49:27Speaker 06

  How is this family going to continue to thrive in the case where that one person's career doesn't turn into what you think it's going to be, or it isn't there anymore? And I think that's a real conversation that families need to have as we're just in an age with a lot of turmoil, a lot of disruption.

• 49:45Speaker 05

  Well, and I look at it the other way, as let's get away from that traditional role. Let's flip it. Let's say that her career has more upside potential. She's really loving what she does. He's not loving what he does. And maybe we flip the traditional roles. You've done studies that show that she is more likely to specialize, which could make her exponential, the whole family exponential amounts of money if she feels like she has a much more supportive family structure at home.

• 50:15Speaker 06

  Exactly. And I think that's what's so interesting now is again, with all of this career disruption that we're seeing is we talk a lot about like, oh, if you know, there's a trade shock and people's jobs get taken, reskilling them for another industry. But recognizing that so much value, so much of our utility is actually created within the home and recognizing that like, we should be flexible to our roles within the home too, not just for a man to change industries, but to say, oh, let's say her career takes off and his stalls out because he was a software engineer and AI just eliminated his job. Can you get value from a different role at home and recognize that is every bit as economically valuable as going out into the labor market?

• 50:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. So how do we, how do we begin to, let's say that Cheryl sees that the deal we have right now is not the optimal deal for her or for me, it's not the optimal deal? How do I renegotiate this without starting a fight?

• 51:13Speaker 06

  Well, I think the key thing is we should keep separate values versus implementation. So I think if you can agree on shared values, and this is why I talk to couples about tracking their time, and I always say, start with a values conversation. Don't start with an accusation of you do less or I do more. Start with, how do we think time should be divided? And I find that couples are often very aligned there. And then you say, well, the rest is just details. Now let's get curious about the data on how we're implementing this. And so I would say the same with a conversation about optimizing your two careers. What are our values? What do we want for our kids? What's our vision for the future? What do we want our eventual lives to look like? What do we want our retirement to look like?

• 51:55Speaker 06

  And then being able to say neutrally without ego, well, what's the best route to get there? Is it investing in one of our careers or is it investing in both of ours equally? Maybe it's her career that actually is the highest, higher investment career. And maybe if we think about our shared goals as a family, instead of staying trapped in that narrow mindset of, oh, I've always got to maximize income. I've always got to maximize success. Maybe that frees somebody up to see, oh, actually for that vision I ultimately have, your career might be our path to get there.

• 52:25Speaker 05

  There was a great piece in the Wall Street Journal at the beginning of this year that said the big retirement crisis is mattering. But I can also see this if in a relationship, one person decides to put their career on hold to support the other person's career because they're wondering if they matter in the same way that they had before. But you reframe this as this career pause or a slower season is a chapter, not an ending. Talk to the person listening right now, it feels like she or he got left behind. What do you want them to hear?

• 52:58Speaker 06

  You said it so well, that life is a book with many chapters. And in any of those chapters, you are making certain investments. I reframe, when people talk about child penalties and women's wages, I say, well, actually, if we look at the data, she was investing in child human capital, which means that she was investing less in her own human capital.

• 53:18Speaker 05

  It's a different currency. There's a new currency.

• 53:20Speaker 06

  Exactly. And so I would ask, what are you investing in, in that season? And what do you expect the returns of that to be? And if you feel like you aren't getting the returns to that within your relationship, that's a conversation to have. One quick checkup that I ask couples to do is to say, are you both getting equal leisure time? Because sometimes if one person is in the labor force and one person is at home with the kids, but you've decided this is your shared values. You think both of these things are important. Well, wait a minute, why does he have a golf hobby where he's away for six hours every weekend and she hasn't been to the gym in four years?

• 53:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 06

  We've got to find ways to actually recognize those contributions. If we've aligned and said, these are our shared values, we value these contributions equally. So you see it in leisure time, that's a quick checkup. You see it in spending power, decision-making power. Like if you decide these are investments that we both value equally, well, then it shouldn't be that just because she has the paycheck and you've decided that he should take a step back, that she actually has the financial decision-making power. Uh-uh, right? You've decided these are our shared values. This is what we're maximizing together. One person is converting their time into money in the labor force. The other person is enabling that to happen by investing at home. Those both need to be recognized with the decision-making power in the financial relationship.

• 54:36Speaker 05

  And this goes back to where we started, which is this conversation that we avoid, that we're afraid of can be so powerful. Like you can become a juggernaut machine with you and your kids, you and your boss, you and your spouse, you and whatever partnership that you're in. I love cementing the things that we talk about when we have phenomenal pros like you on the show by playing a quick little game. I'm going to give you a phrase and you either say, this is true, this is false, or it's complicated, and maybe just a little bit of discourse about, about why. Cause I think for our stackers, this will take this and bring it home. Splitting every bill exactly 50/50 is the fairest way to divide finances in a relationship. Is that true, false, or complicated?

• 55:18Speaker 06

  Absolutely false. And as you know, because I think that we make different investments that can bring equal value into the home and it's not necessarily through the paycheck. And so if you have decided maybe one person stays home, doesn't have a paycheck at all, how are you going to split those bills? So no, you have to have a conversation about values and what each person's contributing. It's much more complicated than that.

• 55:38Speaker 05

  I love the idea of different currencies, like we all bring different currencies and we have different scorecards. It's so powerful. Second, the person who earns more should have the final say on big purchases. True, false, or complicated?

• 55:52Speaker 06

  You know that I'm going to say false because also often that person earns more because of investments that the lower earner has made in enabling their career. So really those spoils of those career belongs to both people. Have this discussion early on in your relationship about how are you going to treat that human capital that one person is accumulating that is going to show up in financial capital later on as actually a joint spoils of the investments you're both making?

• 56:18Speaker 05

  Some of the phenomenal research that you have done really goes hand in hand with some of the research I've seen from a former guest, Scott Galloway does, especially around kids and what it costs for kids. And people think that people aren't having children because they're messing around and because they're not smart. Actually financially, Corinne, based on your research and Scott's research, they're not having kids because they're super smart. So let me give you this one. Taking time off for kids always costs you more in lifetime earnings than it's worth. True, false, or complicated?

• 56:52Speaker 06

  I think that that's absolutely false. If you think about the goal as being utility, if you want kids, then kids are going to bring you an enormous amount of utility. And so there's no way to kind of put a price on that in terms of your career earnings. Because again, earnings are for what? They're ultimately to get you utility. So you've got to decide what your best path is to maximize your utility, not to maximize your earnings.

• 57:14Speaker 05

  Kids are so expensive, though.

• 57:15Speaker 06

  They are so expensive and we could use policymakers to step up to make those trade offs not quite so stark.

• 57:20Speaker 05

  A hundred, a hundred percent, a thousand percent. Prenups are only for rich people or people who don't trust their partners. True, false, or complicated?

• 57:33Speaker 06

  I'm going to say that one is complicated. I think that the discussions that you have in a prenup are very, very important to have. What I've seen in my research is that a lot of times, prenups are used to create a more generous financial settlement than that would be, that would be granted by the courts because prenups are used in the case where somebody already has a lot of assets they accumulated before the marriage and they want to promise some kind of certain payoff to the other person, even if the marriage ends, whereas the court only divides assets that are accumulated after the marriage. So I think you should understand the divorce law in your state and understand what the status quo is, and then decide if you feel like you need a prenup to actually protect you further because of your unique circumstances.

• 58:14Speaker 06

  But you should have the conversation around financial transparency and shared financial decision-making in your marriage, well before you start picking out wedding colors and flowers.

• 58:25Speaker 05

  So important. And again, another conversation that's rarely done. If somebody only takes one thing out of this conversation and does it this week, what should that be?

• 58:36Speaker 06

  I want you to go be productive, taking leisure time. Because what I mean by that is we know if we go to work and we get something done, we get paid in money, we feel productive. But ultimately you're going to take that money and you're going to buy something with it that brings you utility. So really the goal was utility. So in economics terms, if you go right now and you do something that brings you utility, you were just as productive. You produced just as much in economics terms. And so if you go away from this conversation and you start with that picture at the beginning of if you were a mega billionaire, what would your life look like? And you put one of those things on your calendar. I made you more productive. I made you richer and you should feel really good about how you're spending your time.

• 59:17Speaker 05

  The book is called Having It All. In the book, Corinne is writing specifically to women. What I found fascinating, and this is the first thing as, as we got to know each other before we hit the record button, I told Corinne that as a man, this is stuff men need to read. Men need to read this to know the squeeze that's happening with the women in your lives. I think it's so important. I think it's such an important work. Having it all, where do we find it?

• 59:47Speaker 06

  The paperback is available wherever books are sold and you can follow my Substack if you want to hear more about what I have to say, corinne low.substack.com. And you can find me on Instagram. But yes, I think guys, it is such a good gesture if you are in a relationship to show up, having done your homework, to read this book, to understand the issues that are facing women and to understand also a richer life for yourself where that goal isn't just financial success, that goal for you too, is also having it all.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think this is required reading stackers, women and men stacking Benjamins. Dr. Corinne Low, thank you so much for educating us. What a great time. Thank you so much.

• 1:00:27Speaker 06

  Thank you. It was a great conversation.

• 1:00:30Speaker 07

  This is Chris from Heavy Metal Money. When I'm not raging in a mosh pit, I'm stacking Benjamins.

• 1:00:37Speaker 05

  Big thanks to Corinne Low and holy cow, guys. What an incredible interview. Let's talk first about this idea of utility that economists talk about all the time, Anna. This is what financial planning is all about. It's not about who dies with the most money wins. In fact, I saw this statistic a few weeks ago that the average millionaire thinks they don't have enough money to retire, and the way they solve it is by just throwing more money at the problem. When Dr. Low talking about utility, we don't know if we need to throw more money at the problem or not until we know what we actually want.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  And that's a lot of time that you're throwing money at the problem. Like, if you just are like, I'm going to throw money at the problem so that I can be insured that I'm going to be able to retire, that could be an additional five years until you feel satisfied with the amount of money that you have. That's five years of working that you could have done X, Y, and Z, whatever makes you passionate. And so it is really important to understand, like, that's you understanding what your plan is and when you can take a step back, or whatever it is, whatever is in the plan that you're you're working with, you're buying yourself potentially years of being able to do what you want to do.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  Well, and in this study, to your point, when people do throw more money at the problem, it didn't make them feel more secure. I think frankly, the only thing that makes you feel more secure is once you know what the actual goal might be. I think people get freaked out by this has to be in stone, you know? Wait a minute, if I write my goal down, it has to stay written down. Like, there's, there's nothing that says, Anna, you can't take this goal and rip it up tomorrow. Like, you can change the game whenever the hell you want.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Yeah, maybe they just don't trust themselves, or I don't know what exactly it is, but it's okay to pivot and to change those, and that's important in life. And we have goals that are such long-term, 30, 40 years long, that we absolutely have to change them at some point.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  And I think another piece of this that I love that she brought up was the fact that a lot of these goals maybe hurt our income streams. Like, if I'm a spouse and I want to spend time at home with the kids, if I'm a spouse and the person that I'm married to, or the person who I'm in a relationship with gets a job in another city, and I have to quit my job because it's location dependent, and I gotta go follow them to another city, there are other currencies other than money that are at play here, Anna. And sometimes, these currencies are so much bigger. Investing in your kids, or investing in your partner's career, even though it costs you money, there's so many other currencies you gain along the way.

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. You gotta think outside of just the dollar amount. And I think that's what we try to understand as financial planners, and the reason why we work with a set amount of families, because we really want to get to know them deeply and understand what their goal is. Are they primarily driven by the dollars that they see on their retirement accounts? Are they primarily driven by their kids' happiness with their own happiness? Or is there a specific goal that they have in mind? It's really important for us to also understand that within our clients, so that we can help direct them when they come to us and they say, hey, we want to move. And we have to decide, you know, I'm going to bring up as many

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  questions as I possibly can to understand the intention of that and what's going to happen, and help them make that decision. And for them to know, for me, it's not just about money, too. It's for me, it's about them being happy. And so I support them in whatever it is that they, they find to be the best decision for their family.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Have you ever done this exercise she talks about of no financial constraints? What would I do?

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  I haven't done it with many of my clients, but you know, it is actually a question that we ask sometimes during our onboarding process to understand if there's something different.

• 1:04:46Speaker 05

  But have you personally done it?

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  I have thought of it as like, a exercise of just like my husband and I, we've talked about, you know, like, what would you do differently? And to answer the question, there is not very much different that I would do with my life right now. There's stressful seasons that I wish weren't as, but in the same way, I find some of these seasons to be challenging, not necessarily stressful. There's a couple of things, but for the most part, like, I feel very happy with how I've landed in terms of my responsibilities in life. And yeah, there are some things that I would probably want to change, but there's not much with what I have. There's not a ton that I can do differently. And I feel very lucky in that way.

• 1:05:33Speaker 05

  Doug, have you and Mrs. Neighbor Doug, have you guys had this conversation? Like, if there were no financial constraints, what would you do?

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  Wait, there's a Mrs. Doug? Mrs. Neighbor Doug?

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  Wait, what?

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, we don't talk about that often, but yes, there is. And of course, we have. We've been married a lot of years, and I don't think you, you stay married over 30 years without having those discussions about what would things be like without financial constraints. And we achieved some of them. Actually, we achieved a lot of them. And I like the way you phrased it, Anna, there are seasons. Because when you look at it that way, you know, the season's going to change. And that, that eliminated, we did too, and that eliminated a lot of friction and stress from us when we realized this is just a season that will either change on its own, or will make it change because of decisions that we're going to make.

• 1:06:23Speaker 04

  And even if you had unlimited money, would that season change? And would you even want it to change? Because sometimes that challenge is a part of growing as a human being.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  I like the way you just phrased that. I think that's an excellent perspective on that. Would you want it to change?

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  We're going back through that Stanley Tucci Discovering Italy show. Doug, I'm sure you've watched this. Have you watched the show?

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:06:47Speaker 05

  No?

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  I haven't. Nope.

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  Oh, just fantastic TV. And he's looking at foods around Italy. He's outside Venice, and there is a specific grape they thought had gone extinct. You've heard this story before with other grapes. Turns out that it wasn't extinct. They found a few, they, they brought it back. It only grows in this marshland outside of Venice. It's the only place this grape grows. And what's interesting is, this grape grows there because it's learned to deal with the stress of the saltwater that nothing else works in. And the fact that without stress in its life, you wouldn't have this fantastic, hugely expensive wine, by the way. You wouldn't, you wouldn't have it. And I think it's such an analogy for what Anna was talking about, you know?

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  As you were telling that story, Joe, I had time to think about your question of would you want some of those things to change? That stressed you out at the time. When our kids were younger, kind of elementary school, middle school ages, and they couldn't drive, of course, I was the parent that ended up taking on a lot of that stuff. It, at the time, is hugely stressful trying to get out of work at the, you know, at the right time, because you've got to get the kid, whatever the practice is, or whatever that obligation is, or just get them home and get them doing their homework and all of that kind of stuff. At the time, it's stressful because you're trying to balance those demands, which are very real. You can't just leave the kid at school. Happened one time, by the way. One time.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  We've all been there.

• 1:08:16Speaker 05

  It's still, I was just thinking, I know specifically the day that I did this.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  Well, I think we all do.

• 1:08:21Speaker 05

  You get the call, they're like, hey, you coming to pick up your kid? You're like, oh, man.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  Yep. No, well, in my case, so quick side story, in my case, I was at home, and then Mrs. Neighbor Doug came home a little bit later, it's getting dark, and she said, where's, where's her son? Like, well, I just assumed like he hadn't come in through the laundry room yet, where she put the car seat down or something. Nope, he was still at daycare. We both left him there. It was totally my fault. 100% my fault.

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  The worst feeling ever.

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  It was my day, but I still remember it. I got there to the daycare, and there's some woman just standing there holding my son with the just worst look on her face. Anyway, back to all of that, and all of that stress was, when I think back of what created such a great relationship with, with me and my sons, it was all of that time with them in the car or after school. I mean, we have the most amazing relationship now, and it's because I frankly, we, I'll say I put myself in a position to be forced to spend that time, because of the way we structured our day. I was the one who often did that. And looking back on it, that is the key to so much of my happiness now in life, because I built those relationships with them in those key years.

• 1:09:36Speaker 05

  Well, and I remember a long time ago, Doug, you and I having a discussion that I was happy to be a part of, about where you live now. And you and Mrs. Neighbor Doug talking about this dream of having this property that, you know, looks different now, and is different now than what you'd envisioned at the time, but starting to build for it 25 years ago.

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, you were there at the beginning of that.

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  This thing that you're living today is pretty exciting, because you had the discussion, right? And I love the fact that Corinne talks about how one partner might want to deal with time differently than the other one does, but we shouldn't avoid those conversations. The fact that you have different ideas around how to spend your time and how to spend your, you know, these different currencies that you have, it's so important to get that out in the open and to have that.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  Anna, when you're becoming a financial planner, do you either have to or choose to take marital counseling classes?

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  Because I gotta believe, I gotta believe that as you talk through some of this stuff with your clients, when the spouse hears what the other person says is are their priorities, it probably really scares the first spouse like, well, that doesn't line up with what my priorities are. And if they want to do that, that's going to impact my stuff. And then now we're back into the friction.

• 1:10:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  I mean, how do you help clients get through that?

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  That's what I was going to say to Joe is we see this in almost every couple to a certain degree. So some people, it's very, very small gap between what they want and they're very supportive of each other. And it's a very healthy, like already figured out situation when it comes to us. And then there's the other end of the spectrum where what they want is so vastly different and it is really hard to work through. And it's really showing them what it would look like saying, okay, if you are wanting to step back at 50 and the other person wants to step back at 65 in terms of retirement, here's

• 1:11:39Speaker 04

  what it's going to look like. Do you guys support that plan? If, you know, we have this large gap in differences or, you know, and I think so much of this is where our industry is headed to as financial advisors in, in the AI, I know it's like so annoying to talk about AI, but more and more of our profession is going to be, you know, not replaced by AI, but there's a lot of it that's going to be done just really, really quickly. And like our planning processes are not going to take as long. So more of what we need to be doing is actually more like the therapy side of things.

• 1:12:16Speaker 05

  Which is great because that's something we, I'm sure you wanted to do more of anyway.

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. So it's just more about that, like human interaction and figuring out like, what does everyone want? And, and that's what I think we need to move towards more as financial advisors as opposed to like, just doubling down on the data and the facts and all that stuff is great. We talk about it all the time here, but more of it is actually just figuring out what two people want, or one individual, doesn't have to be two people. An individual might not know how to make these decisions.

• 1:12:44Speaker 05

  A hundred percent. Yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  And you have to be involved in that, too.

• 1:12:47Speaker 05

  And I love how you pivoted to this is even important for, for anybody, single, in a relationship, married, whatever. But also, this discussion is also important between you and your boss. Like when she changed it from at home to you and your boss, you and your boss have different goals for your time. You and your boss maybe don't communicate about how it's the best use of spending your time. And she gets into this idea of negotiation and you've been there, Anna, I've been there where you had a client that needed just to make more money or needed a change of work. This idea she brings up of a BATNA, which is best alternative to a negotiated agreement. And to replay this, Stackers, I know you

• 1:13:30Speaker 05

  just heard it 20 minutes ago, but just to replay this, you go in and you've done a bunch of research into your alternative. If my boss doesn't give me what I want, here is what the alternative looks like. So Anna, this may, I love this idea in a negotiation because it gives you the ability to walk away. You could go, you know what? If you say no to this, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this thing over here. And oh my, all of a sudden you have all this leverage that you didn't have before because you're willing to walk. Like the power in a negotiation to do that helps the negotiation so much.

• 1:14:04Speaker 04

  I think the other person understanding where you are in terms of values also really helps drive that conversation.

• 1:14:11Speaker 05

  Helps them. Yes, a lot. And whether you're negotiating, who's doing the dishes tonight? Or, or who's, who's picking up the kids from childcare to Doug's point, or what you're doing at work, that BATNA idea is a great way of negotiating. It's wild how she's able to put numbers around all of these, these things, the statistics around all these things that matter so much in our lives. Man, if you know somebody who is struggling to communicate about their goals, about their relationship with either work, home life, all the above, this is a great interview for you to pass on to them. I'd love, love, love to hear your thoughts. You can join us in the basement, our Facebook group, where you can hear more

• 1:14:53Speaker 05

  about what other stackers are thinking when it comes to these negotiations that we have. I'd love to have a discussion about this in our Facebook group, stackingbenjamins.com/basment. Doug, let's mosey out on the back porch for a second because we got some maybe chances to talk in person, not in a Facebook group about this.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  Real fast, I want to bring up that I think a week from tonight, October 28th, at 6:30 PM, our Southern Minnesota Benjamins After Dark group is meeting at 6:30 at the Maverick Innovation Gateway, where they always meet in Mankato, Minnesota. And if you live in Tucson, or Boston, or Minneapolis, Seattle, or Hawaii, check out our groups there. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Joe, we did start, there's a group that started up in Hawaii. They want me to come and, and be a guest. So I'm gonna, I'll just submit my expenses for reimbursement.

• 1:15:51Speaker 05

  Uh, pass. Hard pass on the reimbursement, but you go, girl.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  But yeah, but we've got some great groups all over the country. And if you're interested in forming a group where you live, we can help. And also our group in Seattle, the organizers of our group there, they need some help. So if you're in the Seattle area and you'd like to help us get this group off the ground, give me a ring, [email protected] or DM me in any of the social channels where you see me commenting. I'd love to talk to you and I'm sure that our organizers would love to talk to you as well. You know, as you know, Doug, these, these groups are hard to navigate on your own and they're just juggling a lot of different stuff. So let's get the Seattle group. You know, it, it's tough to get them up and running. Once they're up and running,

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  they kind of, you know, take on a life of their own. But yeah, it takes a little bit of effort to get them started. But then the, the cruise.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  I think we look at the success in Mankato, Boston, and in Twin Cities, they have multiple people. Kevin holding down the fort in Tucson. By the way, I know Kevin would love some help in Tucson if somebody wants to help him, although he's done a great job of keeping that group rolling. And it's always great to see what they're doing down in Tucson. What else we got, Doug?

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  Joe, in our Facebook basement group, Larry shared something online that everybody needs to be aware of, figured out just how easy healthcare decisions are these days. I think everybody needs to hear this.

• 1:17:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, Anna, it's been super easy helping clients with healthcare decisions, hasn't it been? I'm sure.

• 1:17:22Speaker 04

  Extremely easy. Yeah. Black and white.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  This is great. This is all you gotta know, guys, when it comes to your healthcare.

• 1:17:31Speaker 06

  The only thing went down, my Canadian friends were like, oh my God, like, what is going on with the healthcare system? Like, how crazy is it actually down there that something like that would happen? I was like, well, it's not that crazy. You know, you just have to know the difference between your copay and your coinsurance and your deductible and your out of pocket max, right? And your deductible is what you have to pay with cash before your insurance kicks in. And then that's when you pay a percentage of that, which is your coinsurance until you hit your out of pocket maximum, which is technically the maximum amount of money that you'd ever have to pay in a given year. But it's actually not because you're also paying monthly premiums similar to car insurance, right? And sometimes your employer will cover a percentage of those, but it's only a percentage, it's not the whole thing, right? And then you're thinking, okay, well then like, what happens with my family? And that's a really good question. If you have a family, it's

• 1:18:16Speaker 06

  a new deductible and a new out of pocket maximum. You have to recalculate all that math until you figure out how much it's actually going to cost you in a year. And it's really hard to budget for that. But the IRS is like, don't worry, guys, I got you. I got you. We have something called an HSA. And that's something where you can put, it's a health savings account. That's where you can put pre-tax money into a health savings account that they can then pay for your copay and your coinsurance and your deductible and your out of pocket max, right? And it's like you get it at a discount because it's pre-tax dollars, right? You can only get that if you have a high deductible plan. And if you don't have a high deductible plan, you can only do it with a federal savings account, which is similar to the HSA, right? Where you put pre-tax money into a bank account and you can pay for the, the copays and the coinsurance. The money you have on that is that it disappears if you don't use it in a given calendar year.

• 1:19:02Speaker 05

  That's all there is to it.

• 1:19:03Speaker 04

  It's so simple. Yeah. I don't know how people make mistakes.

• 1:19:07Speaker 05

  Larry, thanks for sharing that. Doug, what are our big takeaways from today's show?

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Dr. Corinne Lowe. And before you negotiate, figure out your BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. That'll give you confidence and power to walk away from a bad deal. Second, more from Dr. Lowe. Think of career breaks as trade-offs and not losses. More money doesn't equal more life and there are different currencies we're stacking, not just Benjamins. But the big lesson from today's show, if you tell Joe's mom what your BATNA is ahead of time, she'll just tell you where you and your BATNA can go. That woman's bat crazy when it comes to negotiating. She's a ninja and her BATNA is always threatening no shrimp appetizer at the Sizzler. And we

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  all know there is no best alternative in that scenario. Jeez. Shrimp at the Sizzler, it's like their best meal. Thanks to Dr. Corinne Lowe for joining us today. Her book, Having It All, is in paperback. You'll find it wherever books are sold. We'll also include links in our show notes at stackingbenjamins.com. This show is the property of SP Podcast, LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul Sehy. You'll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go,

• 1:20:37Speaker 03

  not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.