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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. ♪ Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate your being here. My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host. This is a special edition of the show, pre-recorded while I am traveling here during the last two weeks of September. I wanted to make sure I left you with a show, but I wasn't able to prepare prior to my trip the normal shows that I would have liked to have left for you.

If this is your first time listening to the show, I'd encourage you, I hope you enjoy today's content. However, go back and check in the archives prior to the middle of September, or come back after, you know, the first of October, and you'll be able to see and experience the more normal flow of the show.

Or at least you'll find out what has so far become normal, which I'm sure it'll change in the future. Today I'd like to share with you just a few thoughts that I have on alternative forms of investment. And what I want to talk with you about today is investing in your marriage, or if you're not currently married, investing in your relationships.

One of the things that bugs me a little bit is that when people hear the word investment, they often think only of financial investments. And I really feel this is short-sighted for us to do. I'm married, and one of the things that I constantly think about is how can I invest in my marriage?

Now, with marriage I can clearly justify this from a financial perspective. If you are married, and if you divorce, that will be the most expensive thing that will ever happen to you, period. Consider that. I've worked with some divorced clients, and every one of them has confirmed it. Maybe there's a couple out there that would disagree, but most of the people who have been divorced would tell me that, "Yeah, Joshua, that's pretty accurate, actually." So I would encourage you, if you don't invest in your marriage, it will be the most expensive mistake that you can make.

So if you are choosing to spend all of your time optimizing something that's very important, by the way, optimizing the expense ratios on your mutual funds, or optimizing the cost of insurance on your home, if you're spending all your time there, and that has you locked away in front of a computer, and not investing in your relationship with your spouse, how much is that ultimately going to cost you?

It costs you a lot. Maybe it would be wise to spend some time considering how you can invest in your marriage. Now, there are a number of different ways that this could go, and I don't know which way would speak to you. I don't necessarily feel that it's my place to tell anybody else what they should do with their marriage or with their life, even.

It's really not. I'm responsible for mine. I'm not responsible for yours. I'm responsible for my marriage. I'm not responsible for yours. But what I would encourage you is to spend some time thinking about this. For everything that we do, there is a cost, and that cost is the opportunity cost for the things that we do not do.

So you may look and say, "Well, I am investing in my family by working a lot of overtime to earn a lot of extra money." That may be true, and that may be appropriate at this stage in your life. But if you are investing in a lot of overtime, that means that you are not investing in— let me not be so black and white— that could mean that you are also not investing in time with your family.

Now, it's important to me that I not be one or the other, that I not present a false dichotomy. Prior to now, at some point in the historical period, the average work week was a 60-hour work week. In my grandfather's day, I spoke with him when he was alive, and when he was growing up, and when he was a young man, the normal work week for everybody was 60 hours.

Ten hours per day, six days per week. That was the standard. So I would not be one to set an arbitrary limit on this. I'm not saying that 60 hours is overwork, and therefore you're neglecting your family. I don't know if you are or not. I'm just saying that consider whether you're working in a way that is going to ultimately be counterproductive.

So consider, are you investing in your family in the way that you would like to be? So that may be, again, working overtime. That may also be some thoughts such as, are you choosing to work when you don't need to work? You've heard me on the show talk about, doesn't make any sense to me, why young fathers and mothers would spend the golden years of their kids' life working to build their careers so that they can retire when their kids are dead, you know, out of the house and gone.

Hopefully not dead. When the kids are out of the house and gone. Why not spend that time pulled back to just about normal time, or the minimum possible, or be free of work completely because of, you know, in order to invest in your family. My wife and I choose, my wife is home with the kids full time, and I'm working to be home with the kids full time.

I'm home full time. I work from home. I just am not, you know, I still have to put in my time at work. But we're making lifestyle choices to invest in our family and in our relationship. The money's dead and gone when you're dead and gone. Doesn't do you any good.

But you can use the money and do something good with it. Consider is there a way that you can invest in your relationship with your spouse. Consider is there a way that you can invest in, maybe it's instituting a date night routine, if that's something that speaks to you.

If it's investing in a marriage seminar, if that's something that speaks to you. If it's investing in a babysitter and a three-day weekend away. If it's investing in sending the kids to grandma and grandpa's and having a staycation at home, where you have a couple days at home. These things do not have to be either money or relationship.

They can all be done inexpensively and enjoyably. But you have to choose to be proactive. And then consider if you're investing appropriately. I get a bad rap I think in personal finance communities because I don't hammer on a lot of the things that a lot of people hammer on with finance.

And the reason why is because in my experience working as a financial planner, a lot of stuff just doesn't matter. Again, the expense ratio on your mutual funds does not matter if you get divorced. I mean it does matter, but it's like in comparison to the cost of the divorce versus the other, it doesn't matter.

Now, can you enhance a good marriage and keep your mutual funds at a low expense ratio? A hundred percent you can, so that matters. But let's start with the majors and focus on those instead of hammering on the minors. That's my perspective. Consider how can you invest now in your family and in your marriage?

Because if you can keep your marriage together, that will make a dramatic difference. Don't make the mistake that so many have made of sacrificing their marriage on the altar of financial success and then destroying their altar of financial success because their marriage fell apart. Don't make that mistake. What can you do today to invest in your marriage?

It will be different for every one of us at different stages of our life. It'll look different, it'll sound different, the answers will be different. But that should be a question very high on our priority list. You know what? Investing in your marriage is probably one of the best things you could do for your financial security.

Frankly, if you've got a good marriage, your spouse will support you. The wedding vows say in sickness and in health, in poverty and in riches. So if you're going through poverty, your spouse is there to support you. If you're going through riches, your spouse is there for you. If you get sick and you get disabled and you don't have disability insurance, if you've got a spouse, you've got a plan.

Now, it may not be an ideal plan. I'd still love you to get some disability insurance, but at least it's something. I just want to encourage you with that. What can you do to invest in marriage? And I hope, with this I'll close, I hope it doesn't sound crass when I talk about examples like that.

I fear that it may sound a little crass to compare a spouse to an insurance policy. I'm doing it intentionally just simply to drive home the point that there are financial ramifications to relationships. The reason that we buy life insurance on our spouse's life is because our spouse has a financial benefit to us.

That's why you can buy life insurance on a spouse's life, because there is a financial benefit. So let's recognize the financial benefit and let's expand our concept of finance and investing and let's include those things. If you need to support your spouse and healthier eating habits, you might not need the insurance benefit because he or she died of a heart attack.

I think that's enough for today on this subject. I just leave you with that. What can you do to invest in your marriage and to really ensure that you not only have a marriage that lasts, but that you have a marriage that lasts, that's filled with joy? When you download the Ralph's app, you have easy access to savings every day.

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