ATHLLC6864783967

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:03.000 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:06.040 | show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:08.720 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm so excited you're here today

00:00:10.800 | for another return guest appearance

00:00:12.480 | from none other than my good friend, Ramit Sethi.

00:00:15.100 | He's the author of "I Will Teach You To Be Rich,"

00:00:17.280 | a bestseller that sold over a million copies worldwide.

00:00:20.440 | I'm a little partial to the second edition,

00:00:22.240 | which happens to feature me

00:00:23.320 | and my thoughts on credit cards on page 37.

00:00:26.040 | He's also the host of the "I Will Teach You To Be Rich"

00:00:27.920 | podcast, where he goes behind the scenes with couples

00:00:30.480 | who share all the intimate details of their finances

00:00:32.940 | to get his advice, and his Netflix show,

00:00:35.680 | "How To Get Rich," just dropped yesterday,

00:00:38.360 | which I am excited to binge this week.

00:00:40.680 | Now, if you're not familiar with Ramit's work,

00:00:42.520 | you may think all those titles feel a bit used car salesy,

00:00:46.120 | but that assumption is definitely not true.

00:00:48.320 | In all of his work, Ramit focuses on helping others

00:00:51.160 | define a unique version of their own rich life

00:00:53.920 | and make the best financial decisions they can

00:00:56.160 | to start living it.

00:00:57.600 | Back in episode nine, we talked a ton

00:00:59.560 | about how to start living your own rich life,

00:01:01.840 | so definitely go check that out if you haven't.

00:01:04.240 | But since then, he's worked with over 100 couples

00:01:06.900 | to talk about money,

00:01:08.080 | so I wanted to dive deeper on that topic.

00:01:10.320 | That means best practices for managing money

00:01:12.320 | with your partner, building a shared rich life vision,

00:01:15.560 | moving from asking each other $3 questions

00:01:17.880 | to $30,000 questions, the red and green flags

00:01:21.600 | you might wanna look out for in your own relationship,

00:01:24.120 | and a lot more, so let's jump in right after this.

00:01:27.840 | (upbeat music)

00:01:29.920 | - Ramit, thanks for being here.

00:01:31.080 | - Thanks for having me.

00:01:32.440 | - Congratulations, Netflix shows out, how do you feel?

00:01:34.800 | - It feels surreal.

00:01:36.180 | I still cannot believe that I can turn on the TV

00:01:40.200 | and see myself, and I remember filming

00:01:43.320 | every one of those scenes, but when I watch the scenes,

00:01:47.320 | I know the setting, I know the street,

00:01:49.300 | I know what's gonna happen, and then I see my dumb face

00:01:52.560 | walking across the screen in this beautiful cinematic part

00:01:56.000 | of How to Get Rich, and I go, what's that guy doing there?

00:01:58.540 | So it still feels surreal, but it is amazing

00:02:01.400 | that so many people now are watching the show.

00:02:05.020 | I'm excited to dig into it, but let's jump in first

00:02:07.840 | to some of what you've been learning talking to people,

00:02:10.600 | which I know you started writing,

00:02:11.920 | and it's not a two-way medium as much

00:02:13.480 | as you've been experienced now.

00:02:15.520 | So with all the conversations you've had

00:02:17.360 | with people about money, and specifically

00:02:19.100 | with lots of couples, what do you think

00:02:20.560 | one of the biggest misconceptions people have

00:02:22.820 | when it comes to managing money with your partner?

00:02:25.160 | - Well, I think the biggest mistake that I see

00:02:28.920 | with couples is a lack of a shared vision,

00:02:32.920 | and the way that it manifests is not two people

00:02:36.360 | coming to me and saying, hey, we have a lack

00:02:37.760 | of a shared vision, nobody ever says that.

00:02:39.800 | You know what they say?

00:02:40.640 | They go, why does she spend so much at Target?

00:02:42.800 | Or why doesn't he ever wanna talk about money?

00:02:46.080 | That's how it comes up, so it's really transactional.

00:02:49.480 | It's almost focused on these little jabs

00:02:51.980 | about what the other person is doing wrong,

00:02:54.640 | and they come to me often, and they'll be like,

00:02:56.920 | I think I know the solution.

00:02:58.580 | I go, what is it?

00:02:59.420 | They go, we need a budget.

00:03:01.000 | I go, oh, really?

00:03:02.240 | Have you ever kept a budget?

00:03:03.240 | They go, yeah, in 2007, I kept a budget.

00:03:05.760 | I go, how long did that last?

00:03:06.840 | Three weeks.

00:03:08.200 | I go, you're crying, your partner's looking away,

00:03:11.660 | none of you wanna talk to each other,

00:03:13.320 | and you really think a tactical budget is the solution?

00:03:16.220 | No, and that's where the conversation really starts.

00:03:19.860 | - And where do you go from there?

00:03:21.220 | You're seeing these jabs.

00:03:22.380 | Is it about solving the jabs?

00:03:23.900 | Is it about digging deeper?

00:03:25.260 | How would someone listening to this apply this

00:03:28.220 | if they're like, well, we're not on the same page?

00:03:30.020 | - I always start by asking, tell me about a time

00:03:33.760 | in the last month or two where you were not

00:03:36.620 | on the same financial page, and I do that very intentionally

00:03:39.260 | because it's very easy for couples

00:03:41.980 | to start speaking in platitudes.

00:03:43.500 | He always does this, she always says that,

00:03:46.180 | and actually, those are really just stories

00:03:48.420 | that we tell ourselves.

00:03:49.820 | We create stories about each other.

00:03:51.940 | He's considerate, she's busy, and that's maybe true.

00:03:56.820 | It may be situationally true,

00:03:58.100 | but what I really wanna do is take a specific instance.

00:04:00.980 | We went out, we celebrated our son's birthday party,

00:04:03.140 | and then we got in a big fight on the car ride home.

00:04:05.380 | I go, what happened?

00:04:07.100 | And I really make them walk me through it like a movie.

00:04:11.060 | I wanna know scene by scene what's happening.

00:04:12.980 | As they say it, you can hear people replay

00:04:16.140 | their version of reality, and there's a famous study

00:04:19.740 | that I remember studying in social psychology.

00:04:22.200 | I think it was a Harvard-Yale football game,

00:04:24.160 | or Harvard-Princeton or something.

00:04:26.220 | Two schools that are not very good at football,

00:04:28.160 | let me put it that way, and the crowds from each side

00:04:31.180 | were asked what happened in this football game,

00:04:34.140 | and both of them had radically different opinions

00:04:37.260 | about the referees and the integrity of the players,

00:04:40.500 | and that's exactly what happens with these couples.

00:04:42.620 | So we start there, and then from there,

00:04:44.660 | we expand the conversation.

00:04:46.380 | - In over, I think, almost 100 conversations

00:04:49.220 | you probably had, if not more, what's changed?

00:04:51.820 | Have you evolved your thinking of how to have

00:04:54.260 | these conversations, or what people should do,

00:04:56.340 | or how people should act?

00:04:57.340 | - Yeah, I mean, you can hear it.

00:04:58.740 | I actually lost my temper in episode one, and I regret it.

00:05:02.080 | There was a person on there who was saying some things

00:05:03.940 | that I really did not agree with,

00:05:06.540 | and I actually lost my temper,

00:05:07.740 | and I apologized in the episode because that's not cool.

00:05:11.900 | I've become a lot calmer because I've seen so much.

00:05:16.620 | So that's number one.

00:05:17.940 | Two, I can read things that are beneath the surface.

00:05:21.620 | You ever listen to "Love Line" back in the day

00:05:25.180 | with Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew?

00:05:26.860 | So they would get a caller, and within five seconds,

00:05:28.820 | they could identify certain things about that caller

00:05:30.620 | just by the tone of the person's voice,

00:05:34.220 | and it seemed like magic, but now I can understand it.

00:05:38.220 | So for example, there are little verbal

00:05:39.660 | and behavioral tells that we all have

00:05:41.660 | that tell us a lot about money.

00:05:43.100 | If somebody's using a debit card,

00:05:44.780 | they probably have credit card debt.

00:05:46.800 | Okay, they may not even realize why,

00:05:48.820 | but they have credit card debt 'cause intuitively,

00:05:51.160 | they don't wanna put more money

00:05:52.340 | on the back of their balance.

00:05:54.240 | If somebody says something like, "I grew up poor.

00:05:56.380 | "I'm not afraid to be poor," again,

00:05:58.820 | that tells you a lot about the socioeconomic way

00:06:01.600 | they grew up and how they view money.

00:06:03.600 | So there's class, there's gender,

00:06:05.620 | there's a lot of different things that come to play,

00:06:07.980 | and you can hear the patterns

00:06:09.780 | after listening to a few episodes.

00:06:11.520 | Once you start to realize people aren't on the same page

00:06:14.740 | about certain things and that you've play-by-played,

00:06:17.060 | kind of walk through this,

00:06:18.620 | what's the process for healing, if you will?

00:06:20.940 | How should people get on the same page?

00:06:23.260 | What are your kind of protocol or recommendations

00:06:25.660 | for how couples should operate around money

00:06:27.860 | for a healthy relationship?

00:06:29.540 | I like the way you describe it,

00:06:30.620 | a healthy relationship with money.

00:06:32.720 | A lot of us think about a healthy relationship with food

00:06:35.900 | or a healthy relationship with our partner or our kids,

00:06:39.660 | but we don't usually think

00:06:40.580 | about a healthy relationship with money.

00:06:42.960 | We just think of money as this thing

00:06:45.500 | that's always been, for example, guilt-inducing

00:06:49.380 | or anxiety-inducing, and we don't realize

00:06:51.740 | that there's actually another way to live.

00:06:53.620 | So sometimes it's just asking people,

00:06:55.540 | what would it look like to feel good about money?

00:06:58.960 | They never thought of that.

00:07:00.040 | They never even realized

00:07:01.880 | that they were feeling bad consistently,

00:07:04.100 | and so for them to even think about feeling good

00:07:06.060 | is totally foreign, but they could do it.

00:07:08.100 | Intuitively, all of us know what it would feel like.

00:07:10.620 | They start by saying what they wouldn't do.

00:07:12.420 | Well, I wouldn't worry.

00:07:13.540 | I wouldn't agonize over buying a pack of gum.

00:07:15.740 | I go, okay, now tell me what you would do,

00:07:18.500 | 'cause people love to identify themselves

00:07:20.540 | by what they wouldn't do or what they don't like.

00:07:22.940 | I go, what would you do in your rich life?

00:07:24.420 | They go, well, I wouldn't worry

00:07:25.700 | about shopping at this place.

00:07:26.780 | I go, okay, now tell me what you would do,

00:07:29.340 | and that is much harder.

00:07:31.260 | So part of the premise is to help people start to rewrite

00:07:35.880 | the next chapter of their life.

00:07:37.300 | Oftentimes, the same money beliefs we grew up with,

00:07:40.720 | I call them invisible scripts,

00:07:42.740 | are the ones we carry into our 20s, 30s, even 40s.

00:07:46.260 | Things like our parents saying we can't afford it.

00:07:49.900 | You hear that 1,000 times growing up.

00:07:52.200 | You start to really believe it.

00:07:53.940 | It's axiomatic, and one day, let's say you have a good job.

00:07:57.500 | You're making 120K a year, and you have money in the bank,

00:08:01.420 | and then you realize,

00:08:02.420 | why am I agonizing over the price of broccoli?

00:08:05.560 | And it's not, quote, rational, but it's real to you.

00:08:09.260 | So I wanna help them rewrite their narrative

00:08:11.700 | and rewrite the next chapter of their lives.

00:08:13.740 | - And how do you rewrite that?

00:08:14.780 | 'Cause I imagine people listening,

00:08:16.220 | I know I'm one of them, have had that same problem.

00:08:19.320 | And sometimes it's not, I can't afford this.

00:08:23.020 | From listening to your show, which I've done quite a bit of,

00:08:25.140 | you know, blueberries seem to come up a lot.

00:08:27.660 | Rich people are obsessed with berries.

00:08:29.440 | By the way, I am obsessed with berries too,

00:08:31.060 | 'cause when I was a kid, we rarely got 'em.

00:08:33.820 | They were super expensive, and so when I got 'em,

00:08:36.240 | it was like, oh my God, eat 'em fast.

00:08:37.980 | And if I dropped one in the sink while I was cleaning 'em,

00:08:41.260 | I would feel anguish.

00:08:43.440 | And now I have to tell you,

00:08:45.260 | to be able to get blueberries or raspberries

00:08:49.540 | and put 'em in my hand and wash 'em and eat 'em

00:08:52.420 | without counting how many there are,

00:08:54.380 | feels incredibly rich to me.

00:08:57.060 | That just shows you how emotional money is.

00:08:58.620 | I could buy all the raspberries I want.

00:09:00.380 | It's like a jewel.

00:09:01.260 | Oh my God, look at this beautiful raspberry.

00:09:02.940 | I get to eat this thing.

00:09:04.780 | It's a great example of how money emotions carry with us.

00:09:08.900 | - Let's say you're at a place,

00:09:09.860 | you know that oftentimes you can get a nice pint

00:09:12.460 | of blueberries for 3.99 and they're 9.99.

00:09:16.060 | It might not be that I don't feel

00:09:17.260 | like I can afford blueberries.

00:09:18.700 | It might be that I just feel like this is not a good deal.

00:09:21.780 | Well, I think a lot of your listeners are like this, right?

00:09:24.260 | They love the deal.

00:09:25.420 | They love the hack.

00:09:27.540 | And I'm all for that.

00:09:29.340 | Like there's a time and a place

00:09:31.060 | where that makes a lot of sense.

00:09:33.140 | In your 20s, certainly you have more time

00:09:35.580 | than money for most people.

00:09:36.860 | And you're like, okay,

00:09:37.700 | I wanna find like the best airfare deal.

00:09:39.180 | Love it.

00:09:40.020 | Totally get it.

00:09:40.840 | I did the same thing.

00:09:41.680 | I get it.

00:09:42.520 | But at a certain point,

00:09:43.980 | there's a phrase from an old self-development book,

00:09:46.300 | which is, "As I got wealthier,

00:09:48.580 | I couldn't afford to do certain things."

00:09:51.180 | Now, think about what that means.

00:09:52.260 | This person was referring to mowing the lawn,

00:09:54.820 | you know, for spending half of their Saturday

00:09:56.460 | mowing the lawn.

00:09:57.420 | As they became wealthier,

00:09:58.620 | they couldn't afford it because

00:10:00.900 | they wanted to prioritize time with their son.

00:10:03.420 | And so for me, I can't afford now,

00:10:05.780 | or I choose not to spend my time booking flights

00:10:08.980 | and trying to get the best deal.

00:10:11.340 | For me, the best point system

00:10:13.060 | is to be able to afford the flight that I wanna take.

00:10:16.320 | That's really hard.

00:10:17.780 | That's really hard because a lifetime of optimizing,

00:10:21.020 | it feels like a win, right?

00:10:22.260 | You're like, "I got one over the bank.

00:10:23.580 | I got one over the airline."

00:10:25.580 | But you may be winning the battle and losing the war.

00:10:28.980 | And that war really is, "What is my rich life?"

00:10:32.380 | If you were to articulate,

00:10:33.660 | "What's your perfect week look like?"

00:10:35.420 | I bet you spending six hours saving $110

00:10:38.980 | on a flight to New York probably is not part of it.

00:10:41.540 | But it sounds like if you can identify,

00:10:43.180 | I know you kind of have phrased this

00:10:44.420 | in like $3 questions and $30,000 questions.

00:10:47.820 | It's not that I shouldn't spend the optimization energy

00:10:51.100 | on a Saturday afternoon.

00:10:52.340 | It's that there's probably a place in my life

00:10:54.300 | where I could spend it

00:10:55.680 | that isn't gonna save me $3 in blueberries,

00:10:58.100 | but might add 20% to my business this year,

00:11:01.940 | or might be spent evaluating other opportunities

00:11:05.060 | for a career that could double my income.

00:11:08.020 | I would say it's not stop optimizing.

00:11:10.740 | Would you say it's more about figuring out

00:11:12.380 | where the optimization can have the most impact?

00:11:14.840 | I think it's about elevating yourself

00:11:16.900 | to the level that you are at.

00:11:18.580 | When you need to save 50 bucks at the age of 22,

00:11:22.740 | it makes perfect sense.

00:11:23.780 | The problem is that most of us get stuck there.

00:11:26.740 | And we don't realize that as your wealth increases,

00:11:30.220 | your psychology needs to correspondingly come along.

00:11:33.140 | So wealth, by the way, could increase

00:11:34.860 | by your income going up, your investments going up.

00:11:37.860 | Your time may simply shrink

00:11:39.460 | because you have a family or a busy career or a sick parent.

00:11:43.020 | And so you can't keep operating

00:11:44.660 | at the same level with everything.

00:11:46.880 | Now, if it's your hobby, and you're like,

00:11:48.400 | I actually love to do flight hacking, great.

00:11:53.180 | But don't deceive yourself and say like,

00:11:55.140 | I'm doing this to save money.

00:11:57.180 | What we need to do is really adjust our view on the world.

00:12:00.320 | That's the crux of these $3 questions

00:12:02.380 | versus $30,000 questions.

00:12:04.760 | We agonize over $3 questions like,

00:12:07.220 | should I buy the extra large coffee?

00:12:08.980 | Should I get the cheesecake?

00:12:10.180 | Should I flight hack this thing?

00:12:12.980 | Versus if you have a business,

00:12:15.540 | a $30,000 question or even $300,000 question

00:12:18.840 | is much better time spent.

00:12:21.540 | - I'll push back on the flight thing

00:12:22.860 | because I think you could probably optimize away

00:12:24.820 | your family vacation for the year,

00:12:26.320 | which might be five, $10,000,

00:12:28.720 | which for a lot of people might be a huge impact.

00:12:30.740 | - I agree.

00:12:31.560 | - But I think I just have to get over.

00:12:34.280 | It's not worth trying to find the cheaper berries

00:12:36.620 | or not get them, but it's so hard.

00:12:38.560 | - Let's do this.

00:12:39.400 | So I never find success in telling people to get over it.

00:12:42.600 | It never works, right?

00:12:43.820 | Like, hey, get over this emotion

00:12:45.380 | you've felt for the last 35 years.

00:12:47.380 | It's stupid, that doesn't work.

00:12:48.980 | So instead, what I really do,

00:12:50.980 | especially in around the first half

00:12:52.380 | of my conversations with people,

00:12:53.620 | is I really go deep on where'd that come from?

00:12:57.020 | What does it feel like to you

00:12:58.980 | when you get the $75 savings on a JetBlue flight?

00:13:03.380 | And how does it reflect on your partner?

00:13:05.300 | What does your partner say?

00:13:06.140 | And they're over there rolling their eyes.

00:13:07.500 | You can see them on the YouTube video.

00:13:09.320 | And I go, okay, like, that's cool.

00:13:11.340 | I'm not judging them.

00:13:12.300 | I'm really trying to get them to express

00:13:14.040 | because most of them have never been asked about it.

00:13:15.880 | And they've pretty much been mocked

00:13:17.920 | by their partner, et cetera.

00:13:18.880 | So I'm just like, tell me more.

00:13:20.240 | Where does it come from?

00:13:21.680 | And then we start to examine what is their rich life?

00:13:25.920 | And if their rich life is, I wanna go to Bora

00:13:28.600 | or I want to be able to stay home with my kids

00:13:32.040 | for a few years while they're young, I go, cool.

00:13:34.920 | I love that vision.

00:13:35.760 | That's beautiful.

00:13:36.580 | Tell me more about that.

00:13:37.420 | And then we start to try to bring the things together.

00:13:39.240 | Is this thing you're doing serving your vision today

00:13:42.980 | or is it not?

00:13:44.300 | And a lot of times you find out that the vision

00:13:47.260 | and what they're doing on a day-to-day basis

00:13:48.940 | is totally misaligned.

00:13:50.340 | Like I had somebody who drives miles to save money on gas

00:13:54.080 | and it's just not serving them anymore.

00:13:56.680 | It's not even part of their vision.

00:13:58.800 | And again, this goes back to the lack of a shared vision.

00:14:01.820 | Most of us don't have an individual vision

00:14:03.640 | of what our rich life is.

00:14:04.660 | We just like, we're really vague about it.

00:14:06.220 | I like to travel.

00:14:07.540 | And we certainly do not have a shared vision

00:14:09.980 | that is vivid and specific.

00:14:12.280 | How would you tell someone that's listening saying,

00:14:14.160 | okay, I want this.

00:14:15.000 | I want an individual and a shared vision.

00:14:17.360 | What are the steps to create that vision?

00:14:19.280 | What does it actually look like?

00:14:20.360 | Is it written down?

00:14:21.240 | Is it an idea?

00:14:22.360 | Yeah, it's written down.

00:14:23.400 | People intuitively know what they love.

00:14:24.960 | So I do a quick little exercise.

00:14:26.620 | We can do it right now.

00:14:27.520 | Money dials.

00:14:28.360 | Let's talk about it.

00:14:29.180 | So what, Chris, is the thing that you love

00:14:32.120 | to spend money on?

00:14:33.020 | Very few things, but I do like food.

00:14:37.160 | Food, okay, great.

00:14:38.120 | And what do you love about it?

00:14:39.500 | I think especially right now in a world with young kids

00:14:42.520 | where travel isn't what it used to be.

00:14:45.240 | I mean, at one point we quit our jobs

00:14:46.480 | and we just backpacked for eight months, right?

00:14:48.200 | Like this is just not an option with two small kids.

00:14:50.480 | So I think going out and getting to eat

00:14:53.120 | at lots of different restaurants.

00:14:54.560 | I get so excited when a new cuisine or a new place opens up.

00:14:58.120 | It's like, I want to do that

00:14:59.120 | because we're getting a little bit

00:15:00.600 | of that cultural experience while we can't travel.

00:15:03.380 | So that's something right now I feel like

00:15:05.000 | I'm willing to spend money on.

00:15:06.200 | Okay, love it.

00:15:07.040 | Another money dial, food.

00:15:08.160 | By the way, that's the number one most common money dial

00:15:10.360 | is eating out.

00:15:11.200 | So you're in great company.

00:15:12.820 | Number one is eating out.

00:15:14.120 | Number two is travel.

00:15:15.280 | Three is health and wellness.

00:15:16.640 | Four is convenience, which happens to be mine.

00:15:19.000 | And then there's many other money dials.

00:15:20.780 | Now, my second question,

00:15:21.720 | and the reason I call it a money dial,

00:15:23.880 | which you can turn up or turn down,

00:15:25.560 | is Chris, if you could quadruple

00:15:28.240 | the amount you spend on eating out,

00:15:30.720 | what would it look like and what would it feel like?

00:15:33.120 | Before you answer, everybody listening and watching,

00:15:36.700 | I want you to do this with us.

00:15:38.600 | So remember, what is the thing you love to spend money on?

00:15:42.280 | And get as specific as Chris did.

00:15:43.720 | He had a big smile when he was talking about,

00:15:45.560 | I get excited about the restaurant opening.

00:15:47.960 | That's question one.

00:15:48.800 | And now question two,

00:15:49.760 | what if you could quadruple your spend and turn that dial?

00:15:52.760 | Go ahead.

00:15:53.760 | So I know the answer to this

00:15:54.920 | because it just seems so obvious.

00:15:56.980 | Most people listening maybe at one point in their life

00:15:59.040 | have done a cooking class.

00:16:00.040 | If not, and you like food, I would encourage it.

00:16:02.320 | And when you do that,

00:16:03.520 | you're not taking like a technical pastry making,

00:16:05.880 | but you're taking kind of more of a cultural experience

00:16:08.200 | maybe while you're traveling.

00:16:10.280 | You're sitting down with someone from a country

00:16:12.480 | teaching you their food.

00:16:13.920 | Because this is the experience I want out of cooking,

00:16:17.000 | it would look like,

00:16:17.920 | instead of go out and spend money on an Indian restaurant,

00:16:20.320 | I'd love to hire an Indian cook or chef to come in

00:16:23.560 | and do an Indian cooking class and make a dinner.

00:16:25.600 | Are you trying to hire my mom right now?

00:16:27.520 | If she's listening.

00:16:28.360 | Hold on, I'm about to negotiate a deal right now.

00:16:29.980 | How much are you willing to pay for this?

00:16:32.000 | Where is she based?

00:16:33.040 | She'll come to you, depends on the price though.

00:16:34.760 | Yeah, I know.

00:16:35.600 | She's got a son who represents her well.

00:16:37.640 | Quadruple though.

00:16:38.560 | She's got to do it for less than four times

00:16:40.560 | the local Indian restaurant.

00:16:41.400 | I think we might have a business idea here.

00:16:44.420 | But yeah, that's what that would look like,

00:16:45.520 | is every time, if we want to go have a Lebanese dinner,

00:16:48.080 | let's go have it with a family at a house,

00:16:50.380 | cook it at our house.

00:16:51.220 | I don't care where,

00:16:52.040 | but more than just order from a menu at a restaurant.

00:16:54.040 | I love that.

00:16:54.880 | What a beautiful answer.

00:16:55.840 | Okay, I'll tell you what I love about that answer.

00:16:57.720 | First of all, you've clearly thought about it.

00:16:59.600 | Okay, I love that.

00:17:00.520 | That's actually quite rare.

00:17:01.640 | When I ask people what would it look like to quadruple,

00:17:04.680 | usually they haven't thought about it.

00:17:05.960 | And then their first initial answer is very linear.

00:17:09.120 | They almost always, with food, say,

00:17:10.760 | "Well, I'd probably be eating out four times a week."

00:17:13.760 | Which is possible, you know.

00:17:15.240 | But I love that you went multi-dimensional.

00:17:18.820 | It wasn't just quadruple the quantity,

00:17:21.200 | it was the changing the quality.

00:17:23.760 | And you went to the experience.

00:17:25.000 | I want to have the cultural experience.

00:17:26.300 | I want to have a chef come in,

00:17:27.960 | or we'll go to them and teach us, create an experience.

00:17:30.560 | There's so many different ways to think about

00:17:32.880 | expanding your vision of what you love.

00:17:35.560 | And so if you're listening to this,

00:17:37.240 | food is a great example.

00:17:38.400 | Chris just gave us a phenomenal way to think about

00:17:40.800 | what would it look like to turn that dial up.

00:17:43.000 | If it's travel, you can imagine

00:17:45.800 | you might go to different destinations.

00:17:47.560 | You might stay at different hotels,

00:17:49.080 | if you're a hotel person, or fly on a different seat.

00:17:52.200 | You might bring loved ones with you and treat them.

00:17:56.160 | There's so many different ways to expand your vision.

00:17:59.820 | Now the whole point of this,

00:18:00.800 | why are we even talking about money dials,

00:18:02.820 | is that how can you create a vision

00:18:05.400 | for what excites you about your money,

00:18:08.280 | if you only think about money

00:18:10.080 | in terms of restriction and anxiety?

00:18:12.640 | And that's how most of us think about money.

00:18:14.600 | I ask you, how do you feel about money?

00:18:15.720 | They go, I feel guilty, I feel overwhelmed, I feel stressed.

00:18:18.000 | I go, okay, well, what do you talk about

00:18:19.280 | on a day-to-day basis?

00:18:20.160 | They go, can we afford Target?

00:18:21.540 | Why'd we spend so much on asparagus?

00:18:23.320 | How come my partner never reconciles this and that?

00:18:26.720 | I go, yeah, that sucks.

00:18:28.380 | All you talk about is negativity and reactivity.

00:18:31.500 | We gotta be able to have a vision

00:18:33.280 | so that we can spend extravagantly on the things we love,

00:18:37.000 | as long as we cut mercilessly on the things we don't.

00:18:39.600 | So that, Chris, is how I start off,

00:18:41.640 | really help people create their vision,

00:18:44.560 | is to find out what they're already excited about,

00:18:47.040 | and then ask them themselves to articulate

00:18:50.040 | what turning that dial up would look like.

00:18:52.520 | - And do you also ask them

00:18:53.900 | what you would turn the dial down on, or?

00:18:55.680 | - Yeah, but not till way later.

00:18:57.360 | Because I want them to get super excited.

00:19:00.240 | So usually, a common example, everybody loves Italy.

00:19:03.140 | It's like the safest destination.

00:19:04.860 | - We just did an episode on Italy.

00:19:06.660 | So much good feedback, go back and listen if you haven't.

00:19:09.100 | - It's like a gimme.

00:19:10.060 | It's like a comedian making a fart joke.

00:19:12.020 | You're like, okay, you kinda know

00:19:13.900 | you're gonna get that response.

00:19:14.940 | By the way, I'm not equating Italy to a fart joke.

00:19:17.620 | But I am saying, whenever you talk about Italy,

00:19:19.800 | everyone's got a big smile.

00:19:20.860 | Hell, we even took our parents

00:19:22.180 | as part of our honeymoon to Italy,

00:19:24.220 | because we know everybody loves it.

00:19:25.980 | People will go, I love to travel.

00:19:27.180 | I go, where would you like to travel?

00:19:28.540 | And they just go like, oh, I'd just like to go anywhere.

00:19:30.680 | I go, uh-uh, you're gonna tell me

00:19:32.800 | exactly where you wanna go.

00:19:34.000 | I force them to get specific.

00:19:35.960 | And so, we end up with them saying,

00:19:37.800 | I wanna drink Italian wine, watch the sunset in Rome,

00:19:41.560 | and be staying where we can see the Colosseum.

00:19:43.880 | I go, now that is a beautiful vision.

00:19:45.880 | That is really specific.

00:19:47.120 | And my final question, who would you take with you?

00:19:49.440 | So suddenly, they've articulated,

00:19:51.440 | they can almost smell it, right?

00:19:53.680 | Now that they have that vision,

00:19:55.960 | I take a look at their numbers.

00:19:57.840 | And everyone is required to submit

00:20:00.100 | all of their numbers to me.

00:20:01.160 | So I can see their net worth, income, debt, everything.

00:20:04.180 | And you can see it too.

00:20:05.140 | I pop it up on screen.

00:20:07.140 | Can you imagine being able to see a couple

00:20:09.260 | who overspends by $4,000 a month every month,

00:20:13.180 | and they didn't even know it?

00:20:15.020 | That happens on the pod.

00:20:16.340 | Or a couple who's got a net worth of like $6 million,

00:20:19.540 | and they agonize over an extra $100 a night for a hotel.

00:20:23.460 | That also happens.

00:20:24.920 | Once they know that they wanna go to Italy

00:20:27.420 | and see the sunset, it's actually much easier

00:20:30.660 | for them to themselves make decisions

00:20:33.380 | about what to cut back on.

00:20:35.100 | And that's one of the cruxes of how to get people

00:20:37.460 | to change their behavior with money.

00:20:39.260 | - Have you ever had to come up

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00:20:43.500 | or summarize a long document,

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00:20:46.740 | or even brainstorm ideas for an important project?

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00:20:50.860 | I've actually done all three of those

00:20:52.900 | better and faster than I used to

00:20:55.100 | because I am quickly mastering how I use Notion AI

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00:23:11.340 | I'm fortunate 'cause I know my wife would say

00:23:12.900 | something similar about food,

00:23:13.860 | but let's say she didn't care about food

00:23:15.420 | and her money dial is clothing.

00:23:18.620 | What happens then?

00:23:19.520 | We talked about building a vision and your money dials,

00:23:21.640 | but what if they don't align?

00:23:22.880 | Well, that's okay.

00:23:23.720 | They don't all have to align.

00:23:24.640 | That's actually a big relief that you and your partner

00:23:27.000 | do not have to see eye to eye on everything,

00:23:30.120 | but it does help to see eye to eye on a few big things.

00:23:34.200 | So let me give you a few examples,

00:23:35.480 | including from my own life.

00:23:36.580 | So I love really nice hotels.

00:23:39.400 | My wife likes them, but she doesn't love them like me.

00:23:44.120 | Okay, I love them.

00:23:45.720 | And so we've discussed this a lot.

00:23:48.440 | And we've come up with a solution that works well for us,

00:23:50.420 | which is when we travel, it's a special occasion,

00:23:52.860 | it's an anniversary, et cetera.

00:23:54.140 | So jointly, we're gonna stay at this beautiful place.

00:23:56.980 | But sometimes we're going somewhere and she's like,

00:23:58.780 | "You know what?

00:23:59.620 | "I'm perfectly happy with the ordinary place."

00:24:01.380 | And I go, "Oh, but that city has this awesome resort.

00:24:04.220 | "I wanna stay there."

00:24:05.280 | And so we've talked about how do we wanna reconcile that.

00:24:07.940 | And in our case, we go,

00:24:09.220 | "I will pay the difference personally

00:24:11.980 | "because it's valuable to me."

00:24:13.860 | And for her, she doesn't really mind it at all,

00:24:15.620 | staying anywhere.

00:24:16.500 | Other times, we go somewhere and we're like,

00:24:18.620 | "Hey, we don't actually need to stay at a fancy place.

00:24:20.780 | "We're perfectly fine.

00:24:21.640 | "We're gonna be in and out.

00:24:22.940 | "Cool, we'll stay at a more modest place.

00:24:24.380 | "That's fine."

00:24:25.580 | But the key is we're talking about it.

00:24:27.300 | And we're acknowledging that we've got differences

00:24:29.480 | in certain areas and coming up with a solution for it.

00:24:33.060 | More often than not, couples are not,

00:24:35.900 | they don't even know what their money dial is.

00:24:37.900 | They don't know what they love and what they don't love.

00:24:40.380 | And so everything becomes an existential question.

00:24:43.360 | Why do you wanna stay at an on-property Disney hotel?

00:24:46.800 | I don't want to.

00:24:47.760 | It's $1,200 more and it's purely transactional.

00:24:50.720 | And if you have to go through life

00:24:52.120 | fighting about transaction after transaction,

00:24:54.360 | you've made a wrong turn way back there

00:24:57.300 | by not identifying the key things

00:24:59.160 | that are important to each of you.

00:25:00.360 | - You mentioned that you could just use your money

00:25:02.800 | for the nice hotel.

00:25:04.200 | Do you think it's helpful for couples

00:25:05.560 | to have some money that's their own

00:25:07.380 | and some money that's theirs together?

00:25:09.240 | What's your perspective?

00:25:10.080 | - 100%.

00:25:10.900 | The simplest way to set up joint accounts

00:25:14.540 | is one joint account, which is used for all joint expenses.

00:25:18.820 | Rent or mortgage, utilities, cell phone, all that stuff.

00:25:22.060 | It pays off your credit card.

00:25:23.540 | It goes into joint savings, all of that.

00:25:27.260 | But I also recommend having a little bit of individual money

00:25:30.820 | that each of you can do whatever you want with.

00:25:33.580 | And I think that's really healthy.

00:25:35.100 | And a lot of people, they prefer to have

00:25:36.900 | a little bit squirreled away in their own personal savings.

00:25:39.460 | Fine, other people want to spend it on their hobby, fine.

00:25:42.140 | In my case, it would be really nice hotels, also fine.

00:25:46.300 | It's no questions asked money.

00:25:48.180 | You get to do whatever you want with it.

00:25:49.540 | That is, in my opinion, a really healthy way

00:25:51.820 | to approach a hybrid system of joint and individual money.

00:25:55.460 | - And is there a target for how much you kind of put

00:25:58.100 | of your earnings into that amount?

00:26:00.140 | Does what you make matter at all in this scenario?

00:26:02.180 | - I think it does, I think it does.

00:26:03.580 | Proportional is always a good way to think about

00:26:05.860 | how to set up your account.

00:26:06.940 | So if one person is making three times

00:26:08.660 | what the other person's making,

00:26:09.900 | it's fair to say that one approach,

00:26:12.580 | which I think is pretty healthy,

00:26:13.500 | is for them to pay more for joint.

00:26:16.060 | Now, how you negotiate,

00:26:18.580 | how much goes into your individual accounts is up to you.

00:26:21.420 | But if a person is making three X more,

00:26:23.420 | it's likely they take a little bit more

00:26:25.140 | in their individual accounts as well.

00:26:27.300 | Also keep in mind that the person who's earning less

00:26:29.700 | should not be totally burdened

00:26:32.260 | and be spending 90% of their money on rent

00:26:35.220 | because the higher earner wants to live in a nicer place.

00:26:37.740 | That's not fair either.

00:26:38.820 | - So the model we use is we have one shared checking account,

00:26:42.180 | all the income from everything goes in there

00:26:44.420 | and all the credit cards get paid.

00:26:45.780 | We have our own credit cards

00:26:46.860 | and we kind of spend on them how we will,

00:26:48.900 | but we're not really keeping track of who's spending what.

00:26:52.300 | And it works, is that okay?

00:26:53.580 | Are there problems we're missing

00:26:55.300 | of giving people a little more freedom

00:26:56.620 | because it's all commingled?

00:26:58.300 | - This is a great question.

00:26:59.460 | And you are one of the few people who says,

00:27:01.700 | "Hey, it's working for us,

00:27:02.780 | but what problems are we not seeing down the road?"

00:27:05.820 | That is an amazing question.

00:27:07.540 | So overall, if it's working,

00:27:10.340 | I say generally that's fantastic.

00:27:13.100 | What we wanna do with money and account setups

00:27:15.820 | is to make sure, as you pointed out,

00:27:18.180 | that we're not setting ourselves up

00:27:19.700 | for a big blow up down the road.

00:27:21.340 | So here's some things to think about.

00:27:22.700 | You had kids before, you may have said like,

00:27:27.140 | "Hey, we know how to spend, we're married,

00:27:28.980 | we don't have kids."

00:27:30.300 | And when you have kids, obviously things change a lot.

00:27:33.540 | One person might say,

00:27:34.820 | "I wanna buy a really expensive stroller

00:27:37.740 | or this type of food, et cetera."

00:27:40.060 | And the other might not.

00:27:41.780 | You can do two things.

00:27:42.620 | One is you can change the way your accounts are set up.

00:27:45.300 | Two, you can just have open, regular conversations.

00:27:48.100 | I call them rich life reviews.

00:27:49.740 | You do them once a month,

00:27:51.180 | or in certain times, once every two weeks,

00:27:53.980 | and you just realign.

00:27:54.900 | You don't have to agree on everything, again,

00:27:57.260 | but you can find solutions to make it work.

00:27:59.140 | I do think that some things to keep in mind going forward

00:28:02.020 | would be big changes in income.

00:28:04.900 | Like, let's just say you start making 4X what you're making.

00:28:08.820 | You might go, "Hey, I wanna step it up.

00:28:10.460 | I wanna stay at this place,

00:28:11.620 | or I wanna fly this type of thing," or whatever.

00:28:13.860 | And your wife might not.

00:28:16.220 | That's worth a discussion.

00:28:18.300 | But aside from that, if it's working

00:28:20.500 | and you have regular conversations, I say thumbs up.

00:28:23.820 | - It's funny, I haven't thought about this.

00:28:25.020 | There's a book called "The 80-80 Marriage."

00:28:27.140 | - Yeah, we've talked about it before, yeah.

00:28:29.260 | - I interviewed Nate and Kaylee Klempp

00:28:30.620 | with my wife on episode, I think it was 43.

00:28:33.380 | I'll link to it in the show notes.

00:28:34.380 | But one of the things that I'd never processed until now

00:28:37.660 | was whether you apply this concept,

00:28:39.500 | which is basically that instead of everyone

00:28:42.060 | kind of playing the tit-for-tat game

00:28:43.940 | of we each get $100, we can spend $100,

00:28:46.700 | if you could elevate to,

00:28:48.420 | we know no one's trying to overspend

00:28:51.300 | the amount of money that we have as a family.

00:28:53.180 | We're trying to make sure that we have good times

00:28:56.060 | and we can do our own things,

00:28:57.100 | but you assume best intent, effectively,

00:29:00.220 | and you have healthy conversations,

00:29:02.140 | maybe that could be something that works.

00:29:04.340 | - 100%, but remember,

00:29:05.820 | most couples don't have a vision together.

00:29:09.020 | So they go, yeah, of course, you know,

00:29:11.100 | I trust my partner, we have kids together, et cetera,

00:29:14.020 | but I just can't get over how

00:29:16.140 | they always spend so much on this.

00:29:18.020 | Again, they attack the tactic, they attack the symptom.

00:29:21.220 | What I wanna encourage people to do

00:29:22.980 | and what I do on the Netflix show and on the podcast

00:29:25.540 | is to zoom up and say,

00:29:27.460 | what kind of life do we want to live together?

00:29:29.780 | Some people, their rich life is to be able

00:29:32.180 | to pick up their kids from school every afternoon.

00:29:34.380 | Beautiful, I love it.

00:29:36.300 | Okay, so what do we want to do with our money

00:29:38.540 | to ensure that?

00:29:39.380 | Because if you're spending too much on a mortgage

00:29:42.180 | or a truck, then the other partner

00:29:45.260 | might not be able to do that.

00:29:46.500 | And so that is where we wanna start.

00:29:48.540 | What's the vision?

00:29:49.460 | What does our rich life look like?

00:29:50.860 | Down to what does our perfect day look like?

00:29:53.100 | And then let's use our money to try to create that.

00:29:55.500 | - So obviously you need two people

00:29:56.620 | to create a shared vision.

00:29:58.700 | Do you need two people to be the money manager

00:30:01.900 | in the household?

00:30:02.740 | Or do you think it's okay for one person

00:30:05.700 | to be like, I'm gonna manage all the investments

00:30:07.540 | and track the expenses and do the budgeting?

00:30:09.300 | Or is it helpful to have both people?

00:30:10.540 | - No, you cannot do it alone.

00:30:12.100 | This is a really common thing.

00:30:13.300 | People will say, oh, well, like,

00:30:14.420 | she's the money person in our relationship.

00:30:16.060 | I go, red flag, because just like,

00:30:20.740 | you will almost never these days hear someone saying,

00:30:23.580 | oh, like, he's the parent in this family.

00:30:26.380 | She's the parent.

00:30:27.500 | That's not how it works.

00:30:28.780 | Both people have to be involved.

00:30:31.100 | It is that foundational.

00:30:32.500 | So unlike emptying the dishwasher

00:30:35.700 | or gardening in the back, watering the plants,

00:30:39.060 | which typically one person will do,

00:30:41.300 | it's just natural in a couple,

00:30:42.940 | money is much more like parenting.

00:30:45.060 | We've both got to be involved.

00:30:47.220 | We've got to have a vision.

00:30:49.780 | We've got to talk about it.

00:30:51.020 | And we've both got to put some skin in the game.

00:30:53.540 | That doesn't mean that both of you have to be sitting there

00:30:56.740 | tweaking your asset allocation.

00:30:58.140 | First of all, you shouldn't even be doing that.

00:30:59.620 | One of you is probably gonna be a little more knowledgeable

00:31:02.460 | and comfortable with investments.

00:31:04.020 | Okay, in our relationship, that's me.

00:31:06.420 | But we still look at the numbers.

00:31:08.540 | We talk about what it means.

00:31:10.420 | And she knows.

00:31:13.220 | And when we got together, I told my wife,

00:31:15.380 | look, it would be really easy for me

00:31:16.500 | to be the money guy in our relationship, right?

00:31:18.740 | That's what I do for a living.

00:31:19.740 | I know how to do this.

00:31:20.580 | My systems are bulletproof.

00:31:23.380 | But I told her, I want us to both do this.

00:31:27.100 | And I insisted on it because one day

00:31:28.980 | I'm gonna get hit by a bus.

00:31:30.780 | And the worst thing I could do

00:31:32.180 | would be to leave her defenseless,

00:31:33.620 | especially against some 1.5% AUM

00:31:36.540 | bullshit charging advisory service.

00:31:38.820 | I would come back, okay, from heaven or hell.

00:31:42.260 | And I would be so pissed.

00:31:43.860 | I told my wife that.

00:31:44.900 | And she was like, I would never do 1.5% AUM.

00:31:47.740 | Ah, I love you, babe.

00:31:48.820 | The other thing is, you need two sets of eyes on your money

00:31:52.300 | because these things get complicated, right?

00:31:53.860 | How should we spend?

00:31:54.700 | Am I doing it right?

00:31:55.540 | I just need someone to check me.

00:31:56.660 | And third and most importantly, it's just more fun.

00:31:59.660 | Why would you wanna go on this journey alone?

00:32:01.700 | This is a rich life.

00:32:02.780 | It's not about budgeting.

00:32:04.180 | It's not about paying your bills on time.

00:32:06.380 | That's a classic myth people have.

00:32:08.020 | They think managing money means paying bills on time.

00:32:10.220 | Wrong.

00:32:11.100 | This is about creating a rich life.

00:32:12.700 | And you wanna do it with your life partner.

00:32:15.100 | It's just more fun.

00:32:16.460 | - A lot of times I get emails from people saying,

00:32:18.180 | no, I really wanna get my spouse involved,

00:32:20.300 | but they're just not that interested.

00:32:21.820 | - Yeah.

00:32:22.860 | - It sounds like one tactic is create this rich life together

00:32:26.740 | and excite people about money with what it can do.

00:32:29.540 | Are there other things that you've seen work well

00:32:31.540 | to get people involved?

00:32:32.380 | - But wait, hold on, hold on.

00:32:33.220 | Yes, but I don't wanna skip this

00:32:34.380 | because we can't just skip over like it's not fun.

00:32:37.300 | Yeah, your partner's probably not involved

00:32:39.100 | 'cause every time you both talk about money, it's a fight.

00:32:41.540 | And it's some meaningless tactical question.

00:32:44.300 | Oh my God, I can't believe you got the expensive pickles.

00:32:46.900 | Who the hell wants to talk about pickles

00:32:48.140 | for the rest of their life?

00:32:48.980 | I wouldn't even wanna have those conversations.

00:32:51.140 | So I would say to everybody listening,

00:32:54.420 | the last time you talked about money or the time before,

00:32:57.220 | was it a transactional question?

00:32:59.660 | Was it a negative question?

00:33:01.700 | Was it something accusatory or was it a dream?

00:33:05.580 | Hey, you know what, I've been thinking,

00:33:07.460 | what do you think would make this rest of this year

00:33:09.500 | amazing for us?

00:33:11.260 | Oh, we're planning to see our family for the holidays.

00:33:13.820 | What if we took a day before

00:33:15.340 | and just did something for the two of us?

00:33:17.740 | Have you ever had that kind of conversation?

00:33:19.700 | You know, I talk about it all the time,

00:33:20.700 | but I've tried to model it.

00:33:22.140 | That's why on the podcast and the show,

00:33:24.260 | you can actually hear me showing couples.

00:33:27.380 | You could see me showing them how to do that.

00:33:29.220 | Look at the excitement right now.

00:33:31.060 | That's the kind of energy I want people to bring to it.

00:33:33.540 | So yes, that's number one.

00:33:35.540 | And recalibrating your relationship always is hard.

00:33:38.140 | Your partner might be like, this is really weird.

00:33:39.500 | Why are you talking like that?

00:33:40.860 | You go, you know why?

00:33:41.700 | Because I've realized that when we talk about money,

00:33:45.340 | it's not really fun and I want it to be fun.

00:33:48.100 | I love you and I want us to create

00:33:50.220 | this amazing life together.

00:33:51.500 | Will you sit down and do it with me?

00:33:53.180 | That's compelling.

00:33:54.340 | So that's number one.

00:33:55.820 | Two is, I like people to save for something

00:33:59.420 | that they can do that's really fun this year.

00:34:02.260 | It could be an overnight trip camping.

00:34:04.900 | It could be an amazing trip to Thailand.

00:34:07.420 | It could be a meal at a restaurant

00:34:08.980 | that you've both wanted to do.

00:34:10.100 | But that's a really fun way to make the connection

00:34:13.100 | that spending money can be something

00:34:15.220 | that is part of your rich life.

00:34:16.900 | Totally different than, oh God, we gotta pay this bill.

00:34:19.780 | So I hope everybody's hearing over and over,

00:34:21.780 | start with the positive.

00:34:23.620 | Start with the vision.

00:34:25.180 | Start with using your money to live the rich life.

00:34:27.300 | And all the restriction and cutting back and all that stuff,

00:34:30.020 | we could deal with that stuff later.

00:34:31.580 | - But I do wanna talk about it

00:34:32.660 | because I'm imagining a conversation

00:34:34.540 | between a couple being, okay, what do we wanna do?

00:34:36.540 | You know what, it'd be really nice

00:34:37.500 | to go on a trip to Italy, let's say.

00:34:39.700 | You know, everyone wants to go to Italy.

00:34:40.780 | And it'd be great if we could bring our family there

00:34:42.860 | with us so we could experience it with them.

00:34:44.420 | But it'd also be nice if we could be there

00:34:46.300 | for a few days on our own before.

00:34:47.780 | Maybe we even have someone who could take care of the kids

00:34:49.700 | so we can really enjoy it.

00:34:51.220 | It's like, but when it comes down to it,

00:34:52.660 | we still have to pay for that trip.

00:34:53.740 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:34:54.580 | - And we don't have the money

00:34:55.420 | to pay for that trip right now.

00:34:57.540 | So how do you kind of get back to reality

00:35:01.620 | when you've designed a rich life that you want,

00:35:04.300 | but you just practically can't afford it right now?

00:35:06.140 | - Okay, I love your example.

00:35:07.540 | First of all, no one ever gets that specific

00:35:09.460 | in their example or that big.

00:35:11.380 | So like, yeah, Chris, you know, you're living the life

00:35:13.180 | and you're well-experienced with this.

00:35:14.340 | But honestly, the way people react,

00:35:16.660 | they shrink their dreams.

00:35:18.940 | We've been taught to shrink.

00:35:20.180 | So I'll literally ask them, "What's your rich life?"

00:35:22.220 | And they'll go, "I always have dreamed

00:35:24.020 | "of having a beach house.

00:35:25.140 | "It's not like I need a big one.

00:35:26.460 | "It can be a small one.

00:35:27.420 | "It could be a shack.

00:35:28.380 | "It could be half flooded.

00:35:29.620 | "But you know, it would just be kind of nice."

00:35:32.220 | I go, "What the hell?

00:35:33.620 | "Why are you shrinking your dreams

00:35:35.460 | "in this hypothetical example?

00:35:36.900 | "The point is a rich life, not a small life."

00:35:39.260 | So what you just did naturally is actually a great example

00:35:43.060 | of what I wish people would do is that we are motivated

00:35:46.460 | by big dreams and by vivid examples,

00:35:49.140 | not by naturally shrinking our dreams

00:35:52.020 | to something that seems modest,

00:35:53.780 | but actually will not motivate us three days from now.

00:35:56.020 | So that's number one.

00:35:57.700 | Number two, it's natural that you come up

00:36:00.500 | with some things you wanna do that you can't afford now.

00:36:02.580 | That is a good sign you're on the right track.

00:36:04.380 | A rich life is lived today and tomorrow.

00:36:07.540 | So we did this exercise, my wife and I did it together.

00:36:10.340 | It's the 10-year bucket list exercise.

00:36:12.740 | Love to share it with everybody right now.

00:36:15.020 | We sat down and we pulled out two pieces of paper.

00:36:17.820 | And you can do this, it's really fun.

00:36:19.140 | There's basically very few numbers involved.

00:36:21.780 | And you go, "Hey, in the next 10 years,

00:36:24.340 | "what can we do that would make it an amazing, rich life?"

00:36:29.340 | And so you each take a few minutes and you write it down.

00:36:33.900 | Some of them can be just for you.

00:36:35.640 | Some of them can be together.

00:36:37.780 | And then we compared notes.

00:36:39.180 | So we had some examples of learning

00:36:41.500 | a different language, et cetera.

00:36:43.540 | Each of us go back and forth.

00:36:44.460 | And this is where you get curious.

00:36:45.340 | "Oh, wow, you wanna learn Spanish?

00:36:46.780 | "Would we do it in Mexico City?

00:36:48.240 | "Would you do it alone?

00:36:49.080 | "Oh, you wanna go skydiving?

00:36:50.180 | "That's for you, no thanks, I'm staying on the ground."

00:36:52.980 | And we identified one of our things that was big.

00:36:55.700 | It was the equivalent of the Italy trip.

00:36:58.940 | And for us, it was a 10-year wedding anniversary abroad.

00:37:02.460 | Well, we wanna save money for that.

00:37:04.780 | So what we did was we did a back of the napkin calculation.

00:37:07.700 | Let's just pretend it's gonna cost $10,000,

00:37:10.420 | just for easy math.

00:37:11.780 | Okay, we know it's gonna be roughly 10 years from now.

00:37:14.660 | That means we need to save $1,000 per year.

00:37:17.540 | Okay, great.

00:37:18.540 | We now put that money automatically

00:37:21.060 | into a sub-savings account.

00:37:22.860 | And we know for a fact exactly when we will have enough

00:37:26.180 | for that dream trip of ours.

00:37:28.700 | That's how you do it.

00:37:29.820 | - I mean, that assumes you had the $1,000

00:37:32.300 | a year to set aside, right?

00:37:34.060 | You talk about cutting costs mercilessly.

00:37:35.820 | Is the other aspect of this trying to go in

00:37:38.060 | and see where you're maybe not getting that much value?

00:37:41.260 | This is a conversation my wife and I had the other day.

00:37:43.340 | We were walking in the neighborhood,

00:37:45.380 | and we were like, "Well, if we had $5,000 extra a year

00:37:48.460 | "to spend on something,

00:37:49.300 | "what would we be excited to spend it on?"

00:37:50.980 | - Great question.

00:37:52.140 | - And then we said, if we look at what we had

00:37:54.060 | to cut out of our budget,

00:37:55.820 | are we getting as much joy out of the first $5,000 to go

00:38:00.220 | as we would from the next $5,000 to spend?

00:38:03.020 | And if not, then we should absolutely just cut that $5,000

00:38:06.220 | and swap it out.

00:38:07.220 | - Okay.

00:38:08.060 | - And then we threw savings as a third option.

00:38:10.060 | It's like, we have $5,000.

00:38:11.060 | We could save it, we could spend it,

00:38:13.060 | or we could spend it more optimally.

00:38:14.620 | - And did this get you anywhere?

00:38:16.220 | - No.

00:38:17.060 | - What a surprise.

00:38:17.900 | - I mean, it was a good conversation.

00:38:19.300 | - I'm so shocked.

00:38:20.460 | The minute you said the word marginal,

00:38:22.140 | I was like, "Goddammit, this is going nowhere."

00:38:25.340 | So two people who are too smart for their own good,

00:38:27.900 | I love that you brought it up and talked about it,

00:38:30.540 | but I actually, for most people listening,

00:38:32.980 | they're not gonna use the word marginal.

00:38:34.700 | And $5,000 would actually be very meaningful.

00:38:37.060 | So I totally agree with you that there are places

00:38:40.540 | we can look in our own spending and optimize it, 100%.

00:38:44.420 | That comes after identifying what you love.

00:38:47.300 | So I use the CEO strategy.

00:38:48.700 | You can cut costs, you can earn more,

00:38:50.860 | you can optimize your existing spending.

00:38:52.860 | Optimizing would be setting up a reminder once a year,

00:38:56.620 | check your insurance, negotiate your cable,

00:38:59.140 | check all the benefits on your credit cards

00:39:00.980 | and evaluate whether you really need them,

00:39:02.540 | evaluate your subscriptions and many other tools

00:39:05.420 | that are available that can help people do that.

00:39:07.660 | That right there can often save you

00:39:09.820 | well over $1,000 a year, well over it.

00:39:12.900 | Now, here's the key, everybody forgets.

00:39:15.180 | If you save $1,000 or $2,000 a year,

00:39:19.100 | make sure you redirect that money to the places you want,

00:39:23.340 | otherwise it will simply get sucked up by day-to-day life.

00:39:27.260 | And that's a lesson that I learned

00:39:28.340 | from someone who's very wise.

00:39:29.500 | He's a little older than me.

00:39:30.820 | He told me, "Rameeth, when you have kids,

00:39:33.260 | "if you don't prioritize your relationship

00:39:36.440 | "with your partner, your kids will suck up

00:39:38.420 | "every minute of your time.

00:39:40.980 | "And it's great to spend time with them,

00:39:43.000 | "of course you love them, but you've got

00:39:45.380 | "to set pillars in the ground for you and your partner.

00:39:48.300 | "And that's the same with money.

00:39:49.760 | "If you don't prioritize where your money flows,

00:39:52.340 | "and it's not flowing to something

00:39:53.460 | "that's part of your rich life,

00:39:54.340 | "it will simply get sucked up by random expenses

00:39:56.780 | "and you will have no idea where it went."

00:39:58.900 | - You brought up budgeting a lot.

00:40:00.380 | Is that at least a practical way

00:40:02.780 | to get a sense of where you're spending

00:40:04.100 | if someone doesn't have a good sense of it?

00:40:06.340 | - If you want to budget for the last 30 days

00:40:08.260 | of your spending, fine.

00:40:10.260 | That's fine.

00:40:11.100 | I'm not a fan of budgeting.

00:40:12.140 | It doesn't work.

00:40:13.120 | It's very difficult for people.

00:40:14.460 | It makes them feel bad.

00:40:15.420 | And worst of all, it's backwards looking.

00:40:17.020 | It doesn't really tell you anything.

00:40:18.260 | I much prefer to have four key numbers to track

00:40:21.620 | and then get on with my life.

00:40:23.100 | So the four key numbers are fixed costs,

00:40:25.940 | which should be 50 to 60% of your take-home pay.

00:40:29.300 | And that would include your mortgage or rent,

00:40:31.740 | utilities, insurance, any debt payments, auto,

00:40:35.300 | everything that's fixed.

00:40:36.500 | Groceries that stay roughly the same every month.

00:40:39.500 | Next would be savings.

00:40:41.700 | That would be roughly five to 10%.

00:40:43.780 | Next would be investments, roughly five to 10%.

00:40:46.220 | Of course, the more the better

00:40:47.300 | 'cause you can turn a dollar into many more.

00:40:49.620 | And finally, my favorite of all,

00:40:51.300 | guilt-free spending, 20 to 35% of take-home.

00:40:55.900 | Now, I love that last one

00:40:58.000 | because suddenly if you go out to a really nice restaurant

00:41:01.700 | or you wanna get a babysitter one night

00:41:03.600 | so you can go out with your wife or whatever,

00:41:06.360 | you don't have to feel guilty.

00:41:07.620 | You don't have to feel anxious.

00:41:08.780 | You don't have to worry about getting the 9.99 blueberries

00:41:11.580 | because you go, I already hit all my other numbers.

00:41:14.580 | My fixed costs are already being taken care of automatically.

00:41:16.940 | My savings, my investments, all that is automatic.

00:41:19.840 | I have allocated this money

00:41:22.020 | for us to spend on the things we love,

00:41:24.160 | whether it's food, a beautiful coat,

00:41:27.260 | an Uber so that you can go have a nice time, whatever.

00:41:31.260 | That is being intentional with your money.

00:41:34.020 | So four numbers,

00:41:35.100 | those are straight from my conscious spending plan.

00:41:37.020 | That's the numbers that I pay attention to.

00:41:40.100 | - It's funny 'cause when I say budgeting,

00:41:41.620 | I don't actually mean budgeting.

00:41:43.260 | I mean kind of what you're describing there.

00:41:45.140 | It's like having a grasp

00:41:46.380 | of how much you spend each month on fixed things

00:41:49.660 | and how much is left in between.

00:41:52.420 | - The difference is, first of all,

00:41:53.420 | when people think of budgeting, they already hate it.

00:41:55.320 | Okay, it feels horrible.

00:41:56.820 | It feels like a lot of work, which it is.

00:41:58.660 | And it's mostly minutia.

00:42:02.340 | I don't track the price of a snap piece.

00:42:05.700 | It's not worth the time.

00:42:07.420 | And people who budget,

00:42:09.100 | they spend more time recategorizing stuff

00:42:12.500 | and plugging numbers in and checking it all

00:42:15.020 | than they do actually living their rich life.

00:42:17.020 | That's backwards.

00:42:18.500 | The hard work of a rich life is creating the vision

00:42:21.780 | and becoming basically financially fluent,

00:42:24.820 | knowing what a savings rate is,

00:42:26.500 | understanding your asset allocation.

00:42:28.020 | There's like five to 10 big wins in life.

00:42:30.060 | Nail those.

00:42:31.060 | You never have to track the price

00:42:32.420 | of Reese's Pieces peanut butter cups.

00:42:34.940 | You shouldn't.

00:42:35.780 | That's a $3 question.

00:42:37.540 | The $30,000 question is, hey, what's our savings rate?

00:42:41.960 | And can we increase it by 1% per year?

00:42:45.520 | If you do that, that's worth actually over $300,000.

00:42:49.540 | It will make up for all the coffee you ever buy

00:42:51.580 | in your entire life.

00:42:54.340 | Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

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00:45:42.460 | So a little bit ago, you mentioned

00:45:44.180 | there are a few things you hear that are red flags.

00:45:46.220 | I'm curious if there are any other things

00:45:48.020 | that people should be listening for

00:45:50.420 | as ways for them to say, "Oh, you know what?

00:45:52.020 | "Maybe there's an opportunity to improve."

00:45:53.980 | But also the counter of that are,

00:45:55.860 | I don't know if it's a green flag or a checkered flag,

00:45:57.880 | but are there things that when you hear people doing,

00:46:00.340 | you're like, "Oh, they're doing it right in this area."

00:46:02.860 | - Well, you mentioned what you and your wife

00:46:04.340 | just like talking about money.

00:46:05.820 | That's a huge red flag.

00:46:07.700 | The fact that you are just talking about it regularly

00:46:09.900 | while on a walk is awesome.

00:46:13.140 | Awesome.

00:46:13.980 | You're talking about it proactively.

00:46:15.580 | The two of you are having conversations.

00:46:18.140 | That right there, it normalizes talking about money.

00:46:20.980 | And for everybody, that's why I encourage

00:46:23.580 | a monthly Rich Life Review and have a structure for it.

00:46:26.980 | You always start off with a compliment.

00:46:28.900 | I really appreciate that you always book

00:46:32.140 | the best flights for our family.

00:46:33.500 | I know that I never have to worry

00:46:35.440 | about the flights we're gonna take.

00:46:36.380 | You do an amazing job.

00:46:37.340 | I love you.

00:46:38.500 | It's such a beautiful way to start off talking about money

00:46:41.380 | and to really set the intention.

00:46:42.820 | It sounds a little formal.

00:46:43.980 | A lot of people going, "That's weird.

00:46:45.260 | "I really don't care if it sounds weird.

00:46:46.700 | "I want you to feel good.

00:46:47.540 | "I want your partner to feel good

00:46:48.660 | "and for you two to be connected."

00:46:50.820 | Other green flags I see are when couples look at each other

00:46:55.820 | and they often say, "What do you think?"

00:46:59.180 | Huge green flag.

00:47:00.860 | In many relationships I speak to,

00:47:03.340 | I'll hear one person talking

00:47:05.100 | and the other will share their piece.

00:47:06.980 | And after an hour or so, I'll ask one of them,

00:47:10.000 | "Do you ever ask your partner questions about money?"

00:47:12.480 | And they'll go, "No."

00:47:14.820 | I go, "Do you ever ask your partner questions at all?"

00:47:17.780 | They go, "No, not really."

00:47:20.140 | I go, "Did your mom or your dad

00:47:22.380 | "ever ask their partner questions?

00:47:25.780 | "No."

00:47:27.020 | And so these things are passed down.

00:47:28.700 | Can you imagine being in a relationship

00:47:30.260 | where your partner never actually asks you a question?

00:47:33.060 | That's a red flag.

00:47:34.200 | But a green flag is when they pause.

00:47:35.780 | They say, "What do you think?

00:47:36.620 | "Gosh, I'm stuck.

00:47:37.440 | "Can you help me out with this one?"

00:47:38.860 | That is when you know you've got a solid foundation.

00:47:41.460 | - And if there are things that you realize,

00:47:42.980 | and we talked about this earlier,

00:47:44.100 | where like I grew up and we always said I can't afford it.

00:47:47.180 | You said you can't just change.

00:47:48.300 | You can't just say get over it.

00:47:49.500 | - Nope.

00:47:50.460 | - Does just knowing where it comes from

00:47:51.960 | and understanding that's why I did it,

00:47:53.200 | does that just make it better?

00:47:54.340 | Or what's the way to move forward?

00:47:57.340 | - That is a huge first step,

00:48:00.260 | is to understand that the way you feel about money

00:48:04.340 | is highly uncorrelated to how much you've got in the bank.

00:48:07.980 | See, we believe that.

00:48:09.100 | We are meaning-making creatures.

00:48:11.180 | So we will have some odd thing,

00:48:13.980 | like you mentioned you feel so bad

00:48:16.740 | about buying $9 blueberries,

00:48:18.500 | which, look, I don't think you're doing that every day,

00:48:20.780 | but once in a while maybe you love blueberries

00:48:22.940 | and it's nine bucks and you just are racked

00:48:24.940 | with all kinds of negative feelings.

00:48:26.860 | We will then say to ourselves,

00:48:28.380 | we come up with a logical reason.

00:48:29.580 | Well, you know, I'd rather put that money somewhere else.

00:48:31.820 | Well, I could turn that $7 differential into $300

00:48:36.020 | if I invest it properly over 65 years.

00:48:38.500 | But first thing we need to do is understand

00:48:40.860 | that a lot of our decisions are highly emotional

00:48:43.020 | based on where we came from.

00:48:44.660 | That alone does not change it.

00:48:46.940 | Let me give you an example from a couple that I spoke to.

00:48:49.900 | This is a couple where the husband was going on a trip

00:48:53.820 | to New York for work and he invited his wife,

00:48:56.300 | said let's make a fun weekend of it.

00:48:59.260 | And she said, okay, where do you think we should stay?

00:49:01.500 | And he had this hotel that he was gonna stay

00:49:03.620 | and she said, her first question, how much does it cost?

00:49:06.720 | And he said, I don't know, it's like 300 bucks a night,

00:49:10.540 | which for Manhattan is quite reasonable.

00:49:13.300 | She said, that is outrageous, I won't do it.

00:49:16.980 | They got a different hotel in Chelsea,

00:49:19.360 | went there for the first night

00:49:20.660 | and then went back to the other Moxie the next night.

00:49:25.020 | Okay, then they went throughout their stay in New York

00:49:28.860 | and you know what she said to me?

00:49:30.340 | She said, we wanted to get Broadway tickets.

00:49:32.580 | So we stood in the last minute ticket line.

00:49:35.860 | This is for people who typically come from out of town,

00:49:38.000 | they get the discount tickets, fine.

00:49:39.720 | The only problem is they're multi, multi millionaires, okay?

00:49:44.340 | And so I had to find a way to show her

00:49:47.120 | that she was not living her rich life.

00:49:49.360 | And she told me this, was not taking hours

00:49:52.180 | of her limited trip to New York City

00:49:54.280 | to stand in a line to save 100 bucks

00:49:56.960 | and get whatever tickets are left.

00:49:58.760 | So here's what I did.

00:50:00.020 | I'm a master of Indian mom guilt because I'm Indian.

00:50:04.620 | And I said to her, okay, imagine the family behind you.

00:50:08.880 | They came here from Wisconsin

00:50:11.600 | and this is their one and only family trip to New York.

00:50:15.300 | And they're hoping to get those Lion King tickets.

00:50:17.680 | But then the multi-millionaire couple in front of them

00:50:21.000 | snatches the last ticket.

00:50:22.680 | How do you think they're gonna feel?

00:50:24.800 | And she was almost starting to cry.

00:50:26.420 | Now, we were having a good time with it,

00:50:28.120 | but what I wanted for her to see

00:50:30.240 | was the stakes of her decisions.

00:50:32.820 | By only looking at the cost,

00:50:34.320 | she never thought about how much she could have left

00:50:36.140 | for the doorman at that hotel,

00:50:37.960 | how much she could have tipped for a server at a restaurant

00:50:41.800 | and what kind of experience

00:50:43.120 | she could have gotten with her husband.

00:50:45.240 | That's what I want people to see,

00:50:46.400 | which is the stakes are high

00:50:47.840 | and it's not just about saving 50 bucks.

00:50:50.400 | Nobody's gonna look back and say,

00:50:51.720 | wow, I optimized for $50 on my trip to New York City.

00:50:56.500 | It's gonna be what kind of magical experience

00:50:58.520 | did I create with the people I love.

00:51:00.480 | - One thing I try to do,

00:51:01.480 | especially when it comes to travel,

00:51:03.360 | is remember how much the trip cost

00:51:06.000 | when you're making these small decisions.

00:51:07.680 | So you're going to New York,

00:51:08.560 | you're going for, you said, $300 a night.

00:51:10.400 | So they're there for, let's say, four or five nights.

00:51:12.440 | You know, you're spending over a thousand.

00:51:13.560 | Flights, maybe another thousand.

00:51:15.000 | All your meals, maybe you're spending another thousand.

00:51:16.920 | You're spending $3,500.

00:51:18.680 | And when you look at it in that perspective,

00:51:20.520 | you think we're spending $3,500

00:51:22.520 | to go on this trip for four days.

00:51:24.520 | Do we wanna make a decision about one little thing

00:51:26.740 | for saving $100 when we lose part of our vacation, right?

00:51:29.960 | If you're spending $3,500 for three days, $1,000 a day,

00:51:34.080 | do we wanna spend our $1,000 a day

00:51:36.440 | to be in New York in line?

00:51:37.600 | - I think that having a holistic vision

00:51:39.000 | is a beautiful way to do it.

00:51:40.280 | It totally changes the dynamic

00:51:42.360 | instead of, should we go to this restaurant?

00:51:44.300 | It's like, what's our vision for this trip?

00:51:46.040 | I'll give you an example.

00:51:47.120 | When you're going on a trip,

00:51:48.200 | not everything has to be the best.

00:51:49.600 | In fact, in my experience,

00:51:51.600 | picking the one thing that is magical

00:51:54.440 | and then the rest can be totally normal, ordinary,

00:51:57.560 | is a great way to approach it.

00:51:59.240 | The approach I try to take

00:52:00.720 | is what would make this trip magical?

00:52:03.060 | On a recent trip, we went to Japan.

00:52:04.880 | We didn't wanna eat at any fancy restaurants.

00:52:07.360 | We'd done that a couple times.

00:52:08.700 | We just wanted to eat at ordinary places

00:52:11.160 | that we found and that we had tagged.

00:52:13.000 | That's it.

00:52:13.840 | So food was not an expensive part of our trip whatsoever.

00:52:17.720 | And that actually is a huge relief

00:52:19.400 | to talk about that ahead of time,

00:52:20.600 | be like, hey, what would make this magical?

00:52:22.040 | I'm actually not feeling the need to go to XYZ

00:52:25.120 | or we can't afford it.

00:52:27.080 | Cool, that's totally fine.

00:52:29.120 | But pick one thing that would make it magical.

00:52:31.560 | It could be a food tour.

00:52:32.880 | It could be a behind the scenes thing

00:52:34.560 | that you find on Airbnb experiences, whatever it may be.

00:52:37.720 | That to me is something you will always remember.

00:52:41.040 | - I like that idea.

00:52:41.880 | I don't know if you know the peak end part of travel.

00:52:44.000 | You wanna have the peak experience

00:52:45.440 | and then you wanna have the end be great.

00:52:46.920 | - I like that.

00:52:47.760 | What it really reminds me of is creating rules

00:52:51.200 | for the important things in your life.

00:52:53.200 | So I have my own 10 money rules.

00:52:55.520 | My wife and I are starting to create our joint rules.

00:52:58.840 | And so for example, when we travel somewhere,

00:53:01.280 | we talk about where we're gonna stay.

00:53:03.080 | We talk about how long.

00:53:04.240 | So we have one rule, which is a minimum of four days

00:53:07.160 | because leisure is the ultimate luxury

00:53:10.640 | to be able to slow down and not have to rush around.

00:53:13.560 | We recently got a photographer when we were in Japan

00:53:16.480 | to take some photos of us and we just loved it.

00:53:18.640 | We're like, wow, we're always gonna remember this trip

00:53:21.240 | because of these awesome photos.

00:53:22.800 | And so we go, cool, let's make that a rule.

00:53:24.480 | Every time we travel somewhere,

00:53:25.680 | we're gonna get a photographer

00:53:26.680 | so we can remember that experience.

00:53:28.920 | Again, these can be really inexpensive things.

00:53:31.280 | One person I know, the day they land, they go out to eat.

00:53:35.640 | Love it.

00:53:36.480 | Simple example.

00:53:37.960 | Could be 15 bucks.

00:53:39.960 | But the idea is you're coming up with these rules together

00:53:42.800 | and really creating that vision.

00:53:44.480 | That is when you've built a beautiful connection

00:53:46.840 | with your partner.

00:53:47.680 | Do you have any money rules with your wife?

00:53:50.320 | - So when we had our last conversation,

00:53:52.200 | I can't believe it was almost two years ago,

00:53:53.760 | it was early episode of the podcast.

00:53:56.000 | You shared your personal money rules

00:53:57.840 | and we talked about coming up with them.

00:53:59.440 | And I know we probably sat down and made up a few,

00:54:01.720 | but I wouldn't say I committed to any,

00:54:03.840 | to the point that you could list yours off, right?

00:54:06.040 | I know this one, I know this one, I know this one.

00:54:07.840 | I think we kind of generally agreed on a lot of things,

00:54:10.680 | but I don't think I've written them down.

00:54:11.800 | So I've got some homework.

00:54:12.840 | The reason I like money rules,

00:54:14.600 | I say this as someone who hasn't put them in stone,

00:54:16.560 | is that it just kind of makes the decision go away.

00:54:18.800 | - Yes.

00:54:19.840 | - You make the money rule of,

00:54:21.200 | I am never going to care about how much berries cost.

00:54:24.680 | Let's say I make that rule.

00:54:25.840 | It's like, if I want blueberries

00:54:26.920 | and the big box is $8, great.

00:54:29.520 | But if the tiny box is $9, doesn't matter.

00:54:32.400 | You got to buy it because you committed in advance.

00:54:34.680 | - Yeah.

00:54:35.520 | And you choose those rules

00:54:36.560 | knowing that you can easily afford it.

00:54:40.040 | No one's going, oh, my rule is I'm going to fly private

00:54:42.720 | every day and you can't afford it.

00:54:44.640 | That would not make any sense.

00:54:46.360 | But for you, the price of blueberries is irrelevant.

00:54:49.200 | It's totally irrelevant.

00:54:50.680 | Now, I would not have made the blueberry rule

00:54:52.680 | when I was 17 years old.

00:54:54.480 | I couldn't have afforded it.

00:54:56.080 | For a lot of people, they're like,

00:54:56.920 | who the hell cares about blueberries?

00:54:58.520 | Cool, not your rule.

00:55:00.000 | But I love the idea of coming up with these rules

00:55:02.000 | and writing them down.

00:55:03.640 | And it also becomes a really fun exercise to do together.

00:55:07.040 | It's dreamy, it's aspirational,

00:55:10.080 | and you can agree on something small to start.

00:55:12.360 | And as time goes on and finances allow it,

00:55:16.000 | you can expand it.

00:55:17.200 | That's really part of a beautiful, rich life.

00:55:20.120 | - I think the one rule we do have,

00:55:21.680 | and it's our version of not having personal savings buckets,

00:55:25.640 | is just that anything under $200, ask permission.

00:55:29.120 | - That's your worry-free number, awesome.

00:55:31.220 | - I think we've had an offline conversation

00:55:33.040 | at one point about, is that number the right number?

00:55:35.120 | So we won't go there. - No, it's not.

00:55:36.480 | - But it's great that you set it up.

00:55:37.960 | That's 99% of it, who cares?

00:55:40.160 | The number itself can be tuned, whatever.

00:55:42.080 | It's like a savings rate.

00:55:43.360 | Oh, should it be 5% or 7%?

00:55:45.400 | Okay, we could figure that out, that's math.

00:55:47.240 | But the idea that you even know what a savings rate is

00:55:50.000 | or a worry-free number, and you've set it up automatically,

00:55:53.480 | that is amazing.

00:55:55.660 | That's a green flag right there.

00:55:57.120 | - The funny thing, though, is because now my wife and I

00:55:59.440 | both become a bit of an optimizer,

00:56:01.000 | a bit of a hacker of sorts.

00:56:02.720 | And so my version of it and her version is,

00:56:05.080 | well, if I could spend $500 without any questions,

00:56:08.320 | as long as I have the intent of returning

00:56:11.240 | more than $300 of what I purchased,

00:56:13.560 | the net amount would probably end up being $200.

00:56:16.480 | And so I remember she definitely said,

00:56:18.040 | "Hey, have you noticed that there was a $600 charge?

00:56:20.240 | "Don't worry, most of it will get returned,

00:56:21.920 | "it doesn't matter."

00:56:22.760 | Or it's like, "Oh, I wanna buy an iPhone."

00:56:24.400 | It's like, "Well, if I do the Apple plan,

00:56:26.160 | "it's only $100 a month,

00:56:27.200 | "so I'm not making $1,000 purchase,

00:56:29.260 | "I'm making $1,100 purchase."

00:56:31.020 | I'll tell you what I like about this,

00:56:32.520 | even though I find that a little odd,

00:56:33.840 | but hey, it's your rich life, it's not mine.

00:56:36.160 | So what I really like about this is

00:56:38.440 | the two of you are talking about it regularly

00:56:40.560 | and you have a good attitude about it.

00:56:42.560 | Like the fact that you're laughing,

00:56:43.920 | and I can tell that you and your wife

00:56:45.320 | like laughed about this and you joke about it.

00:56:48.040 | And you're even making jokes about the optimizer thing.

00:56:51.320 | That is cool.

00:56:52.960 | That's how it should be.

00:56:54.200 | So many times when I talk to couples about money,

00:56:56.640 | or if you're listening right now,

00:56:58.320 | money does not feel like that.

00:57:00.140 | It feels tense and rigid,

00:57:02.800 | and like you're walking on eggshells,

00:57:04.300 | whether you're solo or with a partner.

00:57:06.320 | And in order to become confident with money,

00:57:09.320 | like you are, Chris, the way you're talking about it,

00:57:12.120 | you gotta be competent.

00:57:13.600 | You gotta know what a savings rate is.

00:57:15.920 | You have to have talked about,

00:57:17.960 | hey, what do we feel comfortable on?

00:57:19.520 | And it's okay if your number's different than somebody else.

00:57:21.560 | Fine, it's your rich life.

00:57:23.240 | But I love you modeling what excitement

00:57:26.880 | and confidence and competence looks like.

00:57:30.000 | For someone listening,

00:57:30.880 | there's an arsenal of episodes in your podcast

00:57:33.160 | they could go listen to.

00:57:34.120 | Is there one or two you'd wanna suggest someone

00:57:36.200 | who's heard this conversation,

00:57:37.960 | kind of comes from the attitude of,

00:57:40.040 | I like to optimize, I like to organize my life,

00:57:42.600 | should go and start off with as a good intro

00:57:45.200 | if they haven't heard your show before?

00:57:46.280 | - Yeah, I've got two episodes

00:57:47.760 | that I wanna recommend to people.

00:57:50.040 | First off, episode 20.

00:57:51.680 | My wife is going to divorce me

00:57:53.800 | unless I can stop being so cheap.

00:57:56.840 | It's absolutely fantastic.

00:57:58.760 | If you or your partner is a high net worth person,

00:58:02.320 | or one of you is cheap in the relationship,

00:58:04.560 | or sometimes both of you are cheap, listen to that one.

00:58:07.400 | Also, in episode 80, if I add any more

00:58:11.760 | to our $50,000 of credit card debt,

00:58:14.840 | he will ask for a divorce.

00:58:17.520 | This is a cerebral and deeply psychological episode

00:58:22.080 | where you're gonna learn that money is rarely

00:58:24.360 | just about the numbers.

00:58:25.560 | It goes much deeper.

00:58:26.880 | So those are some that I would highly recommend

00:58:28.720 | to people to start with.

00:58:30.000 | - But also, you should definitely,

00:58:31.720 | like I said in the intro,

00:58:32.640 | go check out at least the first three minutes

00:58:35.120 | of the show on Netflix.

00:58:36.200 | - Yeah, I'd love it.

00:58:37.040 | If you go to Netflix,

00:58:39.080 | the show is called "How to Get Rich,"

00:58:40.800 | and watch the first three minutes

00:58:42.280 | and send me a note about what you think.

00:58:44.200 | Send me a note, you can DM me, email me, tweet me,

00:58:47.920 | but watch the first three minutes

00:58:49.400 | of "How to Get Rich" on Netflix.

00:58:51.200 | It is a different way of looking at money.

00:58:54.160 | - I'm excited for the show.

00:58:55.400 | Ramin, any final parting advice

00:58:57.160 | or places people should stay in touch

00:58:58.520 | with what you're working on?

00:58:59.360 | - You can follow me on Twitter, on Instagram,

00:59:02.960 | and I am doing a behind-the-scenes pop-up newsletter

00:59:07.160 | of what it was like to shoot a Netflix show.

00:59:10.400 | A lot of people are like, "How'd you get the show?

00:59:11.920 | "What's it like shooting?

00:59:13.240 | "Is it real?"

00:59:14.320 | So I'm doing that at iwt.com/netflix

00:59:18.240 | for the next couple of weeks.

00:59:20.440 | - Cool.

00:59:21.280 | Awesome.

00:59:22.120 | Ramin, thank you so much for being here again.

00:59:23.400 | - Thanks for having me.

00:59:24.480 | - I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

00:59:27.720 | Thank you so much for listening.

00:59:29.480 | If you haven't already left a rating

00:59:31.000 | and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

00:59:34.400 | I would really appreciate it.

00:59:36.120 | And if you have any feedback on the show,

00:59:37.560 | questions for me, or just wanna say hi,

00:59:39.920 | I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

00:59:44.200 | That's it for this week.

00:59:45.280 | I'll see you next week.

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