{"id":118921,"date":"2024-03-05T13:11:09","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T17:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/?p=118921"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:32:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:32:52","slug":"146-andrea-erik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/146-andrea-erik\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 146. \u201cI&#8217;m jealous when I see friends&#8217; vacations on Instagram\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"\u201cI\u2019m jealous when I see friends\u2019 vacations on Instagram\u201d\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tM4q4J6tzHQ\" width=\"100%\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/49MFynUw6Ir8wAQhEk8nWI?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Erik is 44 and Andrea is 43. They\u2019re trying to determine what to do with a bump in income. Andrea wants to save for college tuition, because that\u2019s what her parents did. Erik\u2019s did not, so he\u2019d rather use it elsewhere. Can they overcome their inherited patterns and come together on a shared vision?<\/p>\n<p><strong>This episode is brought to you by:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Rocket Money | Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions \u2013 and manage your expenses the easy way \u2013 by going to\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/rocketmoney.com\/ramit\">https:\/\/rocketmoney.com\/ramit<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Trade | Right now, Trade is offering our audience a free bag of coffee with any subscription at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/drinktrade.com\/ramit\">https:\/\/drinktrade.com\/ramit<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Eight Sleep | For a better, smarter sleep, go to\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/eightsleep.com\/ramit\">https:\/\/eightsleep.com\/ramit<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0for $200 and free shipping.<\/p>\n<p>Netsuite | Get visibility to everything in your business in one place. Sign up and defer payments, with no interest, for six months at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/iwt.com\/netsuite\">https:\/\/iwt.com\/netsuite<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>ZocDoc | Download the ZocDoc app for FREE\u00a0 at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/zocdoc.com\/ramit\">https:\/\/zocdoc.com\/ramit<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0then find and book a top-rated doctor today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tools mentioned in this episode<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/l-money-made-easy\/\">Money Made Easy Mini Course<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/landing-conscious-spending\/\">Conscious Spending Plan<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Show Transcript<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[00:00:05]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We never get around to the dreaming, vision casting as much. We just talk about the hard stuff.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:12]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I think we used to talk about the good stuff, even when we had way, way more debt than we do now.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:18]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0When I think about money, I am afraid of not having enough. I feel like it\u2019s never going to be enough. I don\u2019t know that there will be a time when I say, oh, I feel secure.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:26]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you say to your husband about money? What are the most common phrases you say to him?<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:32]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We can\u2019t afford it. We need to make more money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:35]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Maybe you need to make more money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:37]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And what do you say to yourself?<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:40]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I say to myself, if you stop being hypervigilant about money, it\u2019s all going to go to\u00a0shit. There\u2019s something wrong with you.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:49]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Meet Erik and Andrea.\u00a0Erik\u2019s 44. Andrea\u2019s 43, and I really love this episode because you\u2019re\u00a0going to\u00a0see how many of our worries and fears about money are unexamined. How many of us worry if we\u2019ll have enough, or if our kids will have enough to pay for college? Those worries are real. But have you ever tried to actually answer the question?<\/p>\n<p>[00:01:13]\u00a0For most of my guests, they will spend decades worrying about money, but they haven\u2019t even spent a few minutes trying to find out when their debt will be paid off or if they can afford to retire.<\/p>\n<p>[00:01:26]\u00a0Erik\u00a0and Andrea are\u00a0going to\u00a0walk us through a beautiful example of how you can go your whole lives worrying about money, but I think there\u2019s a different way, a different way you can choose that lets you feel confident about money by becoming competent.<\/p>\n<p>[00:01:42]\u00a0Let\u2019s get started with Andrea and\u00a0Erik.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:01:45]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0We were sitting in our TV room. I think the kids had just went up for bed. So Andrea had a raise going into the new year, and one of the things that\u2019s come up is putting money away. We have three kids. One of our kids is in eighth grade, and one of Andrea\u2019s things is she wants to start putting money away for the kids\u2019 college, and we\u2019re not on the same page about that at all.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:13]\u00a0And it was a reoccurring conversation, but it really came up again heavy. I think at the time we were sitting on separate couches. We have two couches that make a little corner in our room. And I don\u2019t know, I just felt the distance because we\u2019re so different when it comes to that stuff.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Let\u2019s talk about it. So what was the number of the raise? Andrea, in dollar values, how much of a raise did you get?<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:40]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s about $400 a month.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0$400 a month. Okay. right, cool. Congratulations.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:47]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Thanks.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:48]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And so did you bring up the topic of the raise and where you wanted to put the money?<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:53]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm. I did. I said I want to take my raise, and I want to funnel it into a college savings fund. I said, I don\u2019t want to put it in our savings account with our other money. I want it to go into a different account that\u2019s dedicated to saving for college.<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:09]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So that\u2019s how you started the conversation, Andrea, no preamble?<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:15]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0No.<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:15]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you think, babe? I love you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:18]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0No, because I was already mad because we had already talked about this and Erik had said, they can figure it out. Nobody paid for my college, and I was fine. And I said, we\u2019re still paying off your college loans to this day. We\u2019re in our mid-40s. We still have 30 grand paying off in your college debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:37]\u00a0My parents paid for my whole college. Erik\u2019s mom couldn\u2019t. It is no shame on her. She was a good person, but she couldn\u2019t help him. And Erik\u2019s like, well, they\u2019re going to be fine. They\u2019re going to figure it out.<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:49]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, so this has been a heated topic already. So you came in guns blazing. I\u2019m getting this money, and I want to put it away for our eighth-grade son, right?<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:59]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. And what do you remember his reaction being?<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:05]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think he immediately turned cold.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:08]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Money and I want to put it away for our eighth-grade son, right?<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:14]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:14]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. And what do you remember his reaction being?<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:20]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think he immediately turned cold. In conversations with Erik, I typically feel very unsafe because he shows little to no concern about the future, and he\u2019s always been like that. So he doesn\u2019t think a lot about tomorrow. He just thinks about what feels good right now.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. And just a question for you. Is it to worry about the future, or is it to properly plan for the future?<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:46]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0They\u2019ve been synonymous for me for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:50]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you think that they are inherently synonymous?<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:52]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0No. But that results in me feeling really anxious and upset every time we talk about money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hence, starting the conversation fairly aggressively.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:05]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:05]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you recognize that that was a bit of an aggressive way to start the money conversation?<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:09]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. But I didn\u2019t feel bad about it because I already was feeling so angry. I just felt like I needed to just say, hey, throw down a gauntlet. This is what we\u2019re going to do.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Very righteous.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:23]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Very self-righteous.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:24]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0This is how going to be.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:24]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Very self-righteous.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0This is\u00a0how\u00a0going to\u00a0be.\u00a0And, in fact, no matter what he says, that\u2019s actually going to fuel my anger and make me even more angry.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:33]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. If he disagrees with me, I will get even more angry.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:36]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. So in your mind, saving for your son\u2019s college fund is, a, the right answer.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:43]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. That\u2019s based on the math?<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:47]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think it\u2019s based on that\u2019s what my parents did for me. I didn\u2019t have to worry about where\u2019s the money going to come from. They just paid for it because they had saved over the years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:01]\u00a0I don\u2019t agree with a lot of my parents\u2019 decisions, so across the board, I don\u2019t try to emulate them. But in this situation, when I think about my child\u2019s future, I would rather tell him, don\u2019t go to college, go to trade school. Because I don\u2019t want him to walk away with 100 grand of debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. So your decision, would you care to restate your answer? How do you know that you are right about taking your money and putting it away?<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:33]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0It seems to be the responsible thing to do for my child so he won\u2019t have to worry about his future and he won\u2019t be saddled with a lot of debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. All right, Erik, what do you remember happened next in that conversation?<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:50]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0In the most recent conversation, I just felt resigned. She came in a little hot, which isn\u2019t her typical posture. On paper, we put down $350 a month, and I\u2019m like, well, that\u2019s not a huge amount. I don\u2019t want to argue about it. I\u2019m over that argument. It doesn\u2019t feel like we\u2019re going to get anywhere different on, so I just kind of felt resigned.<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:17]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And is there any element of, she got the raise. She obviously is working hard, being recognized at work, therefore she should be able to make the decision, or are your finances decided jointly?<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:32]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0There was a little of that in this instance, but for the most part, we have always and do consider our incomes one, which, what she makes what I make, we\u2019re in it together.<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:45]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, so how\u2019d you end up resolving this?<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:50]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0We have a line item in the conscious spending plan for the kids\u2019 college fund.<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:54]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, it\u2019s true. That\u2019s what we landed on. Yeah. But I think we just know that we\u2019re so different fundamentally when it comes to money that we don\u2019t hope for perfect harmony. It\u2019s not going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:10]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I asked Andrea, how do you know if it\u2019s the right decision to save for your son\u2019s college? And she basically said, \u201cBecause that\u2019s what my parents did.\u201d This is the life of most Americans. What I am begging for you to do is to actually learn how to make these decisions the right way, to take even 15 minutes and run a few numbers, to read a single book on personal finance like I Will Teach You to Be Rich.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:37]\u00a0I\u2019m begging you to take this seriously. This is your rich life. What could be more serious? Making impulsive decisions about multi-hundred thousand dollars decisions is how you end up with no income, no investments, living solely off Social Security, the exact thing that my guests often worry about. What they don\u2019t realize is they have the power to craft their own future, and you can\u2019t do that just blindly following what your parents did.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:06]\u00a0We\u2019ll be right back.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:09]\u00a0Okay, now back to Andrea and\u00a0Erik.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What was the worst dish your parents ever cooked for you?<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:13]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. So my mom made this scalloped potato casserole with cut up hot dogs and green beans in it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:19]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0This is disgusting.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:21]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I grew up in the Midwest, and that\u2019s just\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I knew it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:23]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Welcome to the Midwest.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:24]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0When you said the word casserole, green beans, and then you threw in hotdog, I\u2019m like, this is like Midwest as it comes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:31]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:31]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Now, do you make the same thing for your kids?<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:35]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0No.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:35]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Why not?<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:36]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Never. I never even thought about it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Isn\u2019t it, a, right to do what your parents did for you?<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:46]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I see where you\u2019re going with this.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I just had to show Andrea how following what your parents did with money doesn\u2019t automatically make it the right decision. And the best way to illustrate that was with a disgusting casserole meal with green beans and hot dogs. Please, everybody listening to this and watching this on YouTube, do not write me to tell me how it\u2019s actually good,\u00a0and you just have to use the right spices like your mom did. Black pepper is not a real spice. Send your emails, your angry furious emails to culinary feedback that Ramit will never read at iwillteachyoutoberich.com.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:20]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How long have you been married for?<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:22]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Almost 16 years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:24]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, congratulations.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:26]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:26]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:27]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What\u2019s your wisdom for couples who want to have a long marriage?<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:31]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019ve actually talked about this. Have fun together. Yeah, I think in the past, we had regular date nights. We would try to get out and do things together. It\u2019s often been work trips for Andrea or for me, and we\u2019ve tagged on some us time, and we can leave the kids behind. I have really fond memories of those trips when we get to get away and spend some time together, even if there\u2019s work mixed in.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0When was the last time you took one of those trips?<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:02]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Together? Probably been a year and a half.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:07]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Or more. Maybe two years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:10]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We were trying to reinstitute this date on Thursday night. We just got back from the date and Erik was like, I did not have fun. And I was like, you didn\u2019t have fun on our date? He\u2019s like, no. We just talked about heavy things the whole time. We just talked about money the whole time.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:25]\u00a0I want to have fun with you. And I said, well, our lives don\u2019t have any fun in them, babe. We don\u2019t have fun. And so then we just looked at each other like, what is happening? Why don\u2019t we have any space for fun in our lives? Which I think a lot of that for me is my fears about money prevent me from the freedom of, hey, let\u2019s take a trip, or, hey, let\u2019s go out for this really nice dinner. Because, in the back of my mind, I\u2019m always like, oh crap. We\u2019re going to pay for this later.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Can you give me the full sentence on that? When I think about money, I am afraid of\u2013 finish the sentence for me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:09]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0When I think about money, I am afraid of not having enough.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:13]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What is enough?<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:19]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t know. I feel like it\u2019s never going to be enough, which is what tells me that the problem is me. I have the scarcity mindset of, I\u2019m always going to need more. I don\u2019t know that there will be a time when I say, oh, I feel secure.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:37]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you say to your husband about money? What are the most common phrases you say to him?<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:45]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We can\u2019t afford it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. What else?<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:49]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We need to make more money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:51]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Uh-huh.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:53]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Maybe you need to make more money is the\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Is that true? Andrea?<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:59]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. I have a lot of feelings about money, but they\u2019re not based on anything like empirical evidence. It\u2019s just based on, well, that\u2019s not enough, and we need to have more.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:12]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And what do you say to yourself?<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:16]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0If you stop being hypervigilant about money, it\u2019s all going to go to\u00a0shit.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Good. What else?<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:24]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0And there\u2019s something wrong with you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:36]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Like what?<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:39]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0There\u2019s something wrong with you that you\u2019re in your mid-40s and you don\u2019t have the kind of financial security that your friends have. You aren\u2019t taking the trips that your friends take. You don\u2019t have the kind of cars that your friends have, and you worry about money constantly.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:57]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What kind of cars do they have, the one that sticks in your brain?<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:02]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019m not even a car person, but we have these dumpy cars. So my friend just got a brand new brand new Toyota Sienna, which is the car that I drive, but it is the new model and it is super nice. It\u2019s loaded.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:18]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. How old is your model?<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:21]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s a 2011.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, so 13 years old, and theirs is new. And the trips, can you remember, are you sitting on your couch and you see a friend on vacation on Instagram? Is that how you experienced that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:36]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, a lot of the time. Or my best friend, they just have more money to spend, and they go on a ton of trips. And I\u2019ve even told her, I said, I feel jealous of the fact that you get to go on these trips.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:53]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You said that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:54]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:55]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How did she respond?<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:57]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think I apologized because I could tell that my jealousy was leaking out, and I think I had made a comment to her, like, I\u2019ve never met anybody who takes as many trips as you. And I caught myself and I said, that\u2019s just straight up envy. So I apologized to her about that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:20]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You ever bring up trips at home?<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:22]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, we talk about it a lot.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:24]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you say?<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:25]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Most recently I said, I want to go on an Alaskan cruise. And I said, but when I looked up how much Alaskan cruises cost for a family of five, I was like, probably not going to happen. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:36]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Did you actually say probably not going to happen out loud?<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:40]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I might have said it through my facial expression. I don\u2019t think I actually said it out loud.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:45]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:45]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0But I did put it down when I was writing my out my rich life. I wrote, Alaskan cruise.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:54]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0So I\u2019m holding onto it still.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s interesting. Whether out loud or to yourself, you said probably not going to happen. Do you believe that, that it\u2019s probably not going to happen?<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:06]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Because?<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:10]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think the past predicts the future.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:14]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Meaning, you haven\u2019t been able to save or accumulate enough money, so it\u2019s unlikely you will change in the future.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:20]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Have you been diligent about your finances in the past? I mean, here\u2019s what you wrote in your application. This was in the first two lines. \u201cWe have spurts that trying to get on the same page, get on a budget, and have a conscious spending plan, but then we get tired, or busy, or just forget about it. Then a month later, we\u2019re back to the usual.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:45]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Exactly.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:46]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:47]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve always been super meticulous about tracking the money I have.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:51]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Uh-huh.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:52]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0And so when we got married, I was already meticulously tracking the money I had. It rolled over into me tracking the money we had. And then often when it wasn\u2019t much, Andrea would just get anxious about it, so she would step back and just be like, yeah, you do that because then it would alleviate her anxiety for a short period.<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:13]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Are you still meticulous about tracking?<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:16]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:17]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. And does it work?<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:26]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0It works okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:30]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0When I was single, I was very diligent. I saved a lot. And then when Erik and I got married, we got into a ton of debt and really struggled to pay that off. We started having kids right away, not purposefully, but we\u2019d only been married a year when we had our first kid, so we never got on our feet financially.<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:51]\u00a0Erik ended up losing his job right after we got married, so it\u2019s just been super rough. Our whole marriage has been rough, and so it\u2019s hard for me to have an imagination for what life looks like when money is not an issue.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:03]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What I hear is Andrea being fearful of money, worried about money, and even envious about money. And what I also notice is these are all feelings, but she and\u00a0Erik\u00a0haven\u2019t really taken effective action to change their situation. Remember what I say. People with problems love to talk about their problems.<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:24]\u00a0And people who feel bad about money, love to talk about how they feel bad. But very few of them are willing to take specific steps to change their financial situation. Emotions matter. Feelings are real, but your personal finances are not going to change with your feelings alone.\u00a0You need automation, investments, calculations, all the things I teach in my book and my coaching program.<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:49]\u00a0We\u2019ll be right back after this.<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:51]\u00a0Let\u2019s get back to the show.<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:53]\u00a0You can hear Andrea and\u00a0Erik\u00a0going the rest of their lives feeling bad, not enough, can\u2019t afford it, you don\u2019t earn enough. What a dismal life. I wonder where all of this came from.\u00a0That\u2019s what I started asking about next.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:09]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0My parents worried about money constantly. They did not spend money ever.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:14]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Telling me two Mid-western parents were worried about money and passed that down to their daughter?<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:21]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:23]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Everybody who comes for me about Mid-western culture, money culture, don\u2019t. Just stop. We\u2019re seeing yet another example. Okay, just a couple questions about this Mid-western upbringing. Parents didn\u2019t talk about money very much in front of you because money is for adults, not for kids. True or false?<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:43]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0True.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Your parents own their house. They did a few things around the house. Probably your dad did it. Maybe your mom. I\u2019m talking about renovations, stuff like that, repairs. He did it himself. He was very proud of it. True or false?<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:57]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0True.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:58]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:59]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0You have to save. You have to save. You have to save. And it\u2019s never enough.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What did they say exactly that made you feel that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:14]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Can I tell you something I observed?<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:16]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Please.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:17]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0When we would go to visit my grandparents, which is what we did once a year, that was our vacation, my mom, she had a notepad, and every time we stopped for gas and we stopped at Burger King to get a fish filet, she used coupons.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:33]\u00a0And then she would take out her notepad and write down exactly how much we spent. There was always a running tab. There was no sense of freedom, like, we\u2019re just going to go have a good time. It felt constrained by over responsibility, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What did you take away from her pulling that notepad out and writing down the fish purchase?<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:02]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I, in my young mind, thought, that\u2019s how you have to do it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:09]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0When did things get tough in your family?<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:12]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0So my dad lost his job when I was in high school. He was a chemical engineer. He lost his job. He didn\u2019t really work again for the next decade. He ended up going back to school to be a teacher, and that didn\u2019t work out. He was a car mechanic out of our garage for a while. That didn\u2019t really work out.<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:28]\u00a0My mom was working. This is just a little caveat. My dad, the people that he worked for, somehow they ended up scamming him. They reported his salary as twice what it was, and they ended up scamming him out of all this money. So I remember playing in the background. That was the narrative of scary, bad things or will happen to you with money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:53]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So therefore you need to?<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:57]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Be hypervigilant, write everything down.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:01]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, I\u2019m sorry to hear about dad losing his job. And you were what, a young teenager at the time.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:09]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I was 17. Self-deprivation became the way I kept myself safe. So if I didn\u2019t spend the money, I somehow felt powerful and in control. If I spent the money, it was like I was suddenly vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What does this sound as you say it out loud? What other parts of life have you heard people talk like this? Deprivation as a virtue.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:38]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, besides Mid-western culture, I think a lot of religious\u2013 yeah, I don\u2019t know what else other than that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:46]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You\u2019re nailing it. Midwestern culture, totally right. I hear this all the time. Some religions, eating disorders. Listen, sometimes we do need to cut back on certain things. There\u2019s no doubt about that. If we want to save more for retirement, maybe we can\u2019t go out to eat as much.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:05]\u00a0That makes perfect sense. Hey, if we\u2019ve got coupons and we\u2019re going to go out to eat, okay. Why not? Fine. But it can go too far. And in fact, you then redefine that self-restriction as a virtue. Have you continued doing that until today, age 43?<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:30]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. I can\u2019t even go to the grocery store because I feel so anxious about spending over $100.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:37]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, you do spend over $100 because I have your CSP, so this is the worst of all worlds. You feel horrible and you still do it anyway.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:45]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:46]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So where did your mom learn to be scarce with money? Where\u2019d she learn that from?<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:51]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, that was from her parents. These were my paternal grandparents<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:55]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Ah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:56]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0That we went to visit.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:58]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Got it. So you learned the scarcity from your mom, who learned it from her mom. How many generations do you think it goes back?<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:04]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0At least back three or four generations, at least back to the Great Depression.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:10]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Definitely.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:11]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Probably farther.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:12]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And of your three kids, I know you have an eighth-grade son. What are the ages of the other two, and what\u2019s the gender?<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:19]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We have a sixth-grade daughter and a third-grade boy.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:23]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. If I talk to your sixth-grade daughter right now and I asked her, what do you feel about money today? What would she say?<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:33]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s a very sad to me, she would say, we can\u2019t afford it.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:40]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Parents, if you don\u2019t spend time searching out your invisible scripts, interrogating your invisible scripts, and working on improving your invisible scripts, you will pass along your parents\u2019 invisible scripts with money right to your kids. If you\u2019re scarce with money, you\u2019re currently doing 20 unconscious things right now today that your kids are picking up on.<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:05]\u00a0You\u2019re saying, we can\u2019t afford it. You\u2019re wincing whenever they bring up taking a school trip. You\u2019re rolling your eyes when they talk about another family friend\u2019s vacation.\u00a0\u00a0We spend a ton of time working on helping our kids have a healthy relationship with food. I want you to start developing your own healthy relationship with money and then pass those lessons onto your kids.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:27]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0If I asked, when does mom put herself first, what would she say?<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:33]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0She\u2019d probably say, I can\u2019t think of a time that she did.<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, let\u2019s fast forward. Does she put herself first?<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:49]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0No. She would potentially follow in my footsteps because I may have unwittingly communicated to her that it\u2019s selfish to put yourself first.<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you want her to be saying and doing when she\u2019s 30 years old?<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:10]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s not selfish to enjoy your life. It\u2019s not selfish to ask for what you want. It\u2019s not selfish to invest in yourself or however you want to say, give yourselves the things that you want and deserve.<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:31]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hmm. It\u2019s passing on these invisible scripts generationally.<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:40]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:42]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Sometimes our parents taught us something, and they did their best, but they didn\u2019t have access to the type of information you do. They certainly didn\u2019t have podcasts they could go on and all these books on Kindle. They did their best and they passed on certain messages.<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:54]\u00a0The difference is that you two live in an abundance of information, and you actually have the ability to decide which of these messages you want to continue passing along. Some of them are very good, some of them, like that disgusting casserole, you do not want to pass on.<\/p>\n<p>[00:27:15]\u00a0The funny thing is you know that. You knew that casserole, you\u2019re like, oh, it\u2019s never occurred to me to make that, but somehow your sixth-grade daughter has absorbed the phrase, we can\u2019t afford it. She\u2019s only in sixth grade.<\/p>\n<p>[00:27:29]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I hate it. I hate it so much. I\u2019m embarrassed about it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:27:34]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0For me, I grew up single-parent home pretty poor. My mom worked two or three jobs a lot of times when I was growing up. I don\u2019t know exactly precisely where it came from, but I just always got the message, like, if you have it, then you spend it. And when you don\u2019t have it, you clamp down.<\/p>\n<p>[00:27:52]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0If you have it, you spend it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:27:55]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0And if you don\u2019t have it, then you just clamp down and you eat ramen noodles for the month, or something like that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Would you describe your family as poor?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:03]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, growing up. And I had a job out of college that was a little bit feast or famine. When I had good months, I lived well.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:13]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What\u2019d you do?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:14]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh yeah. I would go out with my friends. I would eat wherever I wanted. I like nice things. So I\u2019d buy a new pair of shoes or spend a pair of jeans, or when I had it, I would spend it, and then months I didn\u2019t have it, I was like, I was okay with that too, because I just knew those months, I was eating ramen that month. I like ramen.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:36]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Are you okay to do feast or famine now?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:41]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0No, I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Are you seeing Andrea\u2019s face, by the way?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:47]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0No, I wasn\u2019t watching.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:48]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Andrea, what were you just doing when I asked that question?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:50]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Raising my eyebrows because I do think that Erik has a very high tolerance, I think an abnormally high tolerance for financial insecurity.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:08]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Would you agree, Erik?<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:09]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, absolutely. I just can\u2019t foresee a scenario where we would wind up in a famine where we just wouldn\u2019t have money to pay the bills, or something like that. I\u2019m just not worried about that. No doubt we\u2019ve had lots of times when things are tight and we\u2019ve had seasons where we\u2019ve lived on credit cards, but we\u2019ve never missed a payment.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:32]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0A minimum payment?<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:34]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:35]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Are you okay with that, Erik?<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:36]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0There have been seasons where that was what we could do. And as long as we were doing that, I had a sense, you know what, it\u2019s going to be all right. This tight time is not going to last forever. We\u2019ll get through this. It\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:51]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How did you know when you were paying the minimums on your credit cards that it was going to be okay?<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:00]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0It just always has been. I\u2019ve always gotten through those times, and I\u2019m a person of faith, so I have a trust, hopefully not a trust I want to take advantage of, but I have a trust that I think God\u2019s going to provide for us. Honestly, my story is I feel like He has. That kind of faith or trust or just confidence in the future is something I don\u2019t want to take advantage of.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:29]\u00a0So I think I have to participate. I have to do the work. I have to have a goal. I have to take advantage of opportunities. I\u2019ll always be able to find something and figure it out. That\u2019s one of the things I\u2019ve learned in our relationship. Not to say, although, it\u2019s constantly in my mind.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:46]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Figure it out.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:47]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, we\u2019ll figure it out. It\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:49]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Here we have it. Andrea is a worrier, and\u00a0Erik\u00a0is a believer. Andrea loves to worry. It\u2019s become a habit to her, even something that comforts her.\u00a0Erik, on the other hand, waves away the worries. It\u2019ll be fine. We\u2019ll be okay. These are common phrases, especially from men who see their role as a provider or someone to take away their partner\u2019s worries.<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:15]\u00a0It\u2019s also common to hear from people who grew up poor. You\u2019ll notice, for example, his comparison to famine and feast, and when he says, if you have money, spend it and also his description of, we\u2019ve had times where we made minimum payments, but we were fine.<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:32]\u00a0So not only do we have two people with vastly different views on money, they\u2019ve never really talked about what their views are, and they\u2019ve never come up with a vision of their life that fits them together. What I really needed right now was for Andrea to get specific about what she wants, and I wanted to see if she could ever talk about money\u00a0without worrying about it.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:55]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0In contrast with him, I sound like the biggest buzzkill in the whole world because Erik\u2019s like, we\u2019re going to figure it out. Everything\u2019s going to be okay. We\u2019re going to work through this. I continually say, no, that\u2019s not good enough and we need to do more. And Erik at times will just be so irritated with me because I keep putting these kind of expectations on him that he\u2019s just like, oh, oh. He doesn\u2019t want that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:32:26]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you know what you would want?<\/p>\n<p>[00:32:28]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Right now, what I would say, and I\u2019ve said this to Erik before, is that I would like him to get another job, not just with the one he has and get another one, but an additional one because I feel like he has the time and the energy to do it. I just want to see him making what I personally consider the same amount of effort that I am making. I would like to have $10,000 a year to go on trips.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Where\u2019s the vacation that\u2019s coming to your mind?<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:03]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0The Alaskan cruise.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:05]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Beautiful. What do you see?<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:07]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I see us on the deck of a huge ship, and we\u2019re just looking at this crazy beautiful landscape with bears, and moose, and all kinds of wildlife.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I love that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:23]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I would like to have a 401K and be on track by the time I\u2019m 67. I think you\u2019re supposed to have 10 times your current income. I would want to be on track towards that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:35]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:36]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I would want to have a three-month emergency fund.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:40]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:41]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Three- to six-month emergency fund. I would guilt-free for Erik and I to each have fun money that we can spend every month. Right now, we just don\u2019t have that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:52]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. How much?<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:53]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0200 bucks.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0200 bucks a month. All right. Fine. What else?<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:57]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I would like to be able to help my children, $5,000 a year per child.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:04]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s $15,000 a year for four years, so 60k.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:07]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:08]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What if they want to go to grad school?<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:09]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I had never considered that actually. I would really like to be able to help other people pay off their debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:20]<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hold on. Hold on a second. I love that. But don\u2019t you two have a considerable amount of debt right now?<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:31]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, we do. I was thinking ideal scenario. I would want to have enough money that not only am I personally out of debt, but that I could help other people get there too.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Why don\u2019t we just focus on ourselves for right now? Huh?<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:47]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0So I told you we\u2019ve been in a lot of debt over the years, and I heard, this was probably five years ago, that there was a church or an intentional community where they paid off each other\u2019s debts. So they didn\u2019t necessarily just pay off their own debt. They helped each other to be debt-free. Something about that stuck.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:17]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I bet it did. What about it stuck with you?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:20]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Feeling like you have somebody on your side, somebody on your team, that you\u2019re not all alone, that you\u2019re not drowning. Somebody will come alongside of you and help you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That was a very, very perceptive answer. Have you both ever been debt free?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:39]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I was before I was married to Erik.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm. Erik, how about you?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:51]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0No. I remember I played tennis in college and I got my first credit card.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What did you get? Bank of America?<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:01]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, it was Bank of America. And we would go on these big tournaments, especially for spring break, and I would rack\u2013 I think had 100,000-dollar limit. That\u2019s huge, and just rack it up. So since college I probably always had debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:18]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s interesting. You\u2019ve learned to live with debt, Erik. It\u2019s like someone learning to live with some pain in their leg. After a while, they\u2019re just like, oh yeah, this is life. I can\u2019t remember what life was like before it. And your wife who\u2019s been in debt for 16 years, but before then, has this window of time, Andrea, where there was no debt, and even though you were still worried about money, you had no debt, does it almost seem like paradise, those first few years of not having debt?<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:53]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, I can barely remember what it even feels like. I don\u2019t want to carry balances on our credit cards. I don\u2019t want to be in debt anymore.<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:01]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. What do you want to do more? Do you want to be debt-free, or do you want to help your kids with college?<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:08]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, geez. That feels impossible to answer. I think if you held a gun to my head, I would probably say I\u2019d rather be debt-free.<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s okay if your kids listen to this. Say that I want to prioritize being debt-free. It means that I\u2019m not a good mom?<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:29]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think it just means that I would be prioritizing myself. I typically prioritize what\u2019s best for others, especially my family. I try to think about what\u2019s best for the family. It works for me a little bit for my ego to know that I can anticipate their needs and I can meet their needs and that they don\u2019t have to they don\u2019t have to struggle.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. Erik, what do you want? We heard a lot of what Andrea would want. What about you? You ever thought about it?<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:08]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. I just want to not worry about it.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0For anyone keeping track at home, here\u2019s what Andrea wants. She wants\u00a0Erik\u00a0to get a second job and to put in more effort. She wants $10,000 a year to go on trips, a 401k at 10 times the current income, a three-month emergency fund, a guilt-free spending account of $200 a month each, a college fund, a $5,000 a year times three kids is $15,000 a year, times four years, $60,000.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:36]\u00a0She wants to be debt-free. She wants to help other people with their debt. Now, I\u00a0got to\u00a0say, I do love the specificity. And you can see what happens when you spend decades worrying about money. It narrows your field of vision to negative feelings about money, but you literally don\u2019t spend 10 minutes working on a plan to see what\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:01]\u00a0In a way, worrying becomes a protective cocoon against reality. It\u2019s easier to worry about what might happen than to actually look at what is going to happen. Incidentally, what does\u00a0Erik\u00a0want? He just wants to not worry about it.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:19]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Andrea wants an Alaskan cruise.<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:21]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s exciting. What do you want?<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:25]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I want to travel. I want to go to Europe, and travel, and see cathedrals, and vineyards. That\u2019s one of the things I haven\u2019t ever done, is traveled internationally much. And I want to do that. I want us to be able to take a vacation to the beach and not have to argue over the $100 extra for the nicer Airbnb. I\u2019d love to do that at least once a year, if not twice.<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:49]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, great. Anything about debt in there? Anything about savings, anything like that? If no, that\u2019s okay. Just tell me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:56]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah, for sure. Specifically in our relationship, in our family. And honestly, when I turned 40 was probably the first time I ever felt anxiety about money because I realized just one of those moments you\u2019re like, oh, we don\u2019t have any retirement. We haven\u2019t been able to think forward at all.<\/p>\n<p>[00:40:17]\u00a0And so since 40, I read a half a dozen books on finance and all those kinds of things and try to figure it out, and we just didn\u2019t have the money at the time to go forward with some of that, but I think that\u2019s why debt didn\u2019t pop up in the list I made because I feel like, oh, we\u2019re on our way with that. I\u2019m not worried about that, but maybe that\u2019s a pattern.<\/p>\n<p>[00:40:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I think so.<\/p>\n<p>[00:40:45]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t foresee ever retiring. I love what I do, and so I could see myself to some extent doing it forever, but when our kids are out of the house, I want us to be able to travel together, and I want us to be able to do what we want. It revolves around freedom. I think a lot of the things I would say specifically revolve around freedom to go and do.<\/p>\n<p>[00:41:10]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Out of curiosity, Erik, how would you travel when you\u2019re both empty nesters, if, as you put it, you still have your job because you want to keep working for a long time? How would you do that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:41:20]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I do coaching, spiritual coaching, spiritual direction for pastors, nonprofit leaders, ministry leaders. So it\u2019s really flexible. I can work wherever. I love it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:41:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, so you can do that lifestyle wise. Okay, great. And Andrea, what about you? Would you be able to travel in the next few years or later?<\/p>\n<p>[00:41:45]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Not with what I\u2019m doing right now. I\u2019m a director of communications for an Anglican diocese. My goal in my life is to become a novelist. So if I ever was able to realize that dream, then yes, I would be able to travel. I\u2019d be able to write from anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:02]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What about if not?<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:03]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I guess just take my three weeks of vacation a year and we would go somewhere together.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:10]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Would you be okay with that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:13]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019d be okay with that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:14]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0There\u2019s a little town on the coast of Italy that a friend of mine, he traveled the world for a year and lived in, I think it\u2019s Positano, Italy, for a month and a half. And I just remember seeing those pictures and being like, I\u2019m going to go there one day and get a little villa on the side of a mountain, drink wine, just see the sights. I could imagine being on a little patio with Andrea as we look over the coast and having a glass of wine and having fun and laughing.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:52]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I love that. And I love Andrea\u2019s reaction too here. Big smile over there. All right. Did two ever talk like this about money?<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:59]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We never get around to the dreaming, vision casting as much. We just talk about the hard stuff.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:07]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hmm. We never get around to the good stuff. We just stay stuck on the bad stuff. Hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:14]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I think we used to talk about the good stuff, even when we had way, way more debt than we do now, I think we would dream a little then.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So what happened?<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:24]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I think we just have gotten a little worn down.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:26]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I think that\u2019s a really honest description of living in America today for a lot of people. You struggle to make it with expensive housing and healthcare prices, and after years of doing this, you just feel worn down. And this is one reason that I think everyone should experience at least one moment of awe every year.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:46]\u00a0Now, it could be a beautiful sunset in a national park, could be a glamorous hotel with incredible food, but we need a way to shake us out of our day-to-day, and to inspire us to think bigger.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:58]\u00a0Let\u2019s pause for a quick message from our sponsors.<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:02]\u00a0Let\u2019s get into the numbers. I\u2019m\u00a0going to\u00a0do a deep dive this week, and you can follow along visually on YouTube. Let me give you the quick numbers right here.\u00a0Assets, $689,000; investments, $49,000; savings, $3,600; debt, $610,000. That includes a mortgage, student loans at 2.4%, and IRS taxes owed, which are two to 4% interest rate.<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:27]\u00a0Their net worth is $132,000. Their combined income is $147,000. And if we drill down further, we find some interesting signs. Their fixed costs are 63%.\u00a0Housing is 28%. Monthly loan payments, $569. Car payments are $0. Very nice. Family mental health is $580, which includes marriage counseling and children\u2019s counseling. Love that. Now, let\u2019s hear some of the details beneath these numbers.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:57]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0$132,000 net worth in your early 40s. How do you feel about that, Andrea?<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:01]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t feel great about it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:05]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Is there a number that you would feel great about?<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:09]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Five to 700,000, I would feel good about that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:12]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Think so?<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:14]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t know. That seems so out\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:16]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s an honest answer. I don\u2019t know. Thank you. Okay. That\u2019s an honest answer. Erik, what do you feel about that number?<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:24]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I feel pretty good about it. We\u2019ve recently paid off a car. We\u2019ve paid off our last credit card, so our only debt left is some IRS we have left to pay for from the last couple years and my school loans. Now it\u2019s like, all right, how do we figure out how to begin to really save and invest and move forward, being future minded?<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:52]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What\u2019s the answer to that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:52]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, I think the answer is, learning from you, and this is one of those things I know it and we haven\u2019t implemented it, is just automating that. And I talked about that. We really need to just say, okay, we\u2019re putting this somewhere. We\u2019re not thinking about it. It\u2019s coming out right away every month.<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:17]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. The interesting question is, why haven\u2019t you done it? I\u2019m not judging, but I think this is the crux of it. If you know it, why haven\u2019t you done it?<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:26]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I think the reason I haven\u2019t done that is things have been tight enough, especially for the last seven years or so. Every month I feel like I\u2019m like, all right, we have money to put into our investment account. Do we have money? So I feel like I\u2019m always nervous to automate it because then we might not\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:51]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s 84 months. 84 months, it\u2019s been tight?<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:53]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t know about that. Do you believe that story?<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:56]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I think my actions would say yes, but my mind knows better. Things were a little bleak in our life. I had started a business. I planted a church, and that failed. And so we did that for three and a half, four years. It was just a pretty hard season of life, and that was reflected financially as well. And I think that\u2019s one of the reasons I was trying to learn about so many things, because things were so hard. I\u2019m like, all right, if I can just get some knowledge. But it just didn\u2019t feel like we had the resources to implement a lot of that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:36]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I can\u2019t point fingers at him because I\u2019m also 100% in the black hole of debt, but I think you\u2019ve really hit on something that is holding us back. We cannot get past it. We just are so stuck.<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:52]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm. Why?<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:53]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think we\u2019re stuck looking at our bank account and seeing, hey, we\u2019re making good money, but it\u2019s not enough to cover all of the\u2013 there\u2019s so many things that we have to do, especially with our kids. It\u2019s not enough. It doesn\u2019t stretch that far, so it\u2019s super hard for us to even think beyond that. I don\u2019t think we know how to do that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:24]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Let me put a pin in that and we\u2019ll come back to it because I want to see where the rest of the spending is. Okay?<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:30]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:30]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. Your investments are\u2013 well, this is simple box. Hey, Erik, why don\u2019t you read this number to me on your investments? What\u2019s that number?<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:37]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0No, thanks.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0No. Yeah. Andrea, care to read the number here on investments?<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:43]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Zero.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:44]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Zero.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:45]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So it\u2019s just $0 going to investments.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:49]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I will sporadically, occasionally put a hundred bucks in our investment account or\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:55]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What is that? Sporadic?<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:56]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I worked for Apple for two years. I quit that job maybe a year ago or so, and so for those years we did have regular investment coming through.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And during that time, did your investments grow?<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:09]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, it was great.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:13]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, I think we have an area of opportunity here. We could probably work on that. Again, I want to remind you, investments are not just for the sake of it. This is where true wealth is created, true wealth.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:24]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Grows, compounds. Talking about safety, you\u2019re talking about knowing if you have enough, talking about being able to take a trip without looking at the price of drinks, that\u2019s this investments. All right. Next up we got savings. Andrea, what do we got here?<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:45]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Savings, $400.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0400 bucks a month, which is 3%. Okay. And by the way, I like how you broke this down. You got 150 bucks a month on vacations, 50 bucks a month on gifts, and 200 bucks a month on personal goals and travel. Is that accurate, or did you just fill that in for this CSP?<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:01]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I would say that that\u2019s our goal, so we try to put that away, but we don\u2019t always hit that goal.<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Would it be more accurate to say this is zero?<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:16]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Not zero.<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:18]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think it\u2019s close to zero.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:20]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Let me just step in right here. I don\u2019t care if you\u2019re 97 years old. If you\u2019re alive and breathing oxygen and you wonder, why don\u2019t I have more saved? This is the answer. If you try to save money sporadically, you will never win. It\u2019ll be like trying to teach your kids to read sporadically.<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:37]\u00a0Unless you\u2019re planning to win the lottery or IPO, you cannot grow any substantial amount of savings or true wealth without making it automatic. This single decision right here is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It\u2019s the difference between taking a nice tour with your friends in your 70s versus sitting around watching Vanderpump rules in the dark while eating a stale bag of Doritos for the rest of your life.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:03]\u00a0Please, if you\u2019re\u00a0going to\u00a0make one decision in life, do not make it, should I get these kibbles and bits for my dog? Should I buy this soup spoon from Target because it has such a cool design? It just came out. I love it. No, make it to set up your automatic savings and investments. That single decision alone will guarantee that you have more money than you ever thought possible.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:26]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, zero, which leaves in your free spending 37% or $4,337 a month on guilt-free spending.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:40]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Our son\u2019s taking violin lessons. Our daughter doing cheer camp and things like that. We have a budget for each of us for spending money, like going out for lunches and things like that. We have a family entertainment budget we have in there, and that\u2019s where all that gets eaten up.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Does your budget map to $4,337 a month or even in the ballpark?<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:07]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0No. So the other thing is literally just last month, we paid off our last credit card and we paid off my car. We had been putting a thousand dollars a month on that credit card. The car, that was a 350-dollar car payment. So some of that is pretty new as of this year.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:27]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What are you going to do with all that extra money? Did you talk about, hey, our car payment is about to end?<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:32]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We talked about the debt snowball. We\u2019re just going to roll it onto the next debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:38]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Did you?<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:39]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s not reflected in this document, but that is what we have talked about.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, wait. Talking about versus done.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:46]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:48]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Why didn\u2019t you do it? The car\u2019s paid off.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:51]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, this is the month we would do it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:53]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much money have you paid off that you are now about to redirect more rapidly paying off your debt? How much per month?<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:05]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0$1,350.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:05]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, so you\u2019re about to put 1,300 bucks a month for years towards low interest debt. How did you guys decide that you wanted to pay a lot more money towards your low interest debt?<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:19]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Our mortgage we got in before it spikes. Our mortgage is 4.3, I think.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm. But there\u2019s no discussion about, hey, we\u2019re going to have hundreds of dollars a month free. Maybe we should save it or invest it. It was just, let\u2019s roll it over and pay off more debt?<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:41]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:41]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Where do you think that came from?<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:45]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0A bad place.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:48]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me. It\u2019s really important for us to know where that came from because it will come up again. It\u2019ll come up for the rest of your lives. I want you to understand where that came from because it will come up again.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:05]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I will. I\u2019ll own that. I just don\u2019t want to have debt. I don\u2019t want to have debt. So I think it\u2019s probably 95% me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:14]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Why?<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:18]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Because I have a lot of shame around having debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. What is that shame?<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:24]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0That I\u2019m a bad person if I have debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:30]<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Wow.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:30]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0If you\u2019re not good with money, you\u2019re a bad person. I know. It\u2019s there, though.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:36]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Where\u2019d that come from? Parents? Religion? Mid-western culture?<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:41]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0My parents.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And is that true, if you have debt, you\u2019re a bad person?<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:49]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0No.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:51]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How come it\u2019s so easy for you to say no?<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:54]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, because I have known that in my mental world. I haven\u2019t been able to move it down to my emotional world.<\/p>\n<p>[00:55:08]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0And I\u2019ve told you that as well. The debt doesn\u2019t mean we are bad people. It might reflect some bad decisions, but it\u2019s not even this stamp that we\u2019re just horrible people or decision makers even. And I have jostled back and forth. I\u2019m like, I don\u2019t care if I die with that stuff. Put the minimum on it. If we can ever pay it off, great.<\/p>\n<p>[00:55:36]\u00a0But my thought has been to try to really tackle all the debt, college and mortgage, but I hadn\u2019t really thought about the interest rates so much. It\u2019s just really nice not having\u2013 there is a psychological component of not having any, what feels like consumer debt.<\/p>\n<p>[00:55:55]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Here\u2019s the thing. When you say, I\u2019m going to die with it, you may say that, and you may be half joking about it, but Andrea doesn\u2019t receive it as a joke. What does she receive it as?<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:06]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Like a weight.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:08]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, yes. It is a weight. Well, it\u2019s not just a weight. She thinks that having debt is morally back. So she\u2019s like, you\u2019re making me a worse person.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:18]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think I default to money because that\u2019s what my parents did for me. My parents were super emotionally unavailable, but they always provided for me financially.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:27]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What the hell? How come this just came up right now? Your parents were emotionally unavailable, so they gave you money and now you\u2019ve become very fixated on money, money, money, but only fixated on enough to worry about it, but not to make a plan about it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:49]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:52]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0The other thing, Andrea, you wanted to do was put your raise, which is around $350 a month, away toward college fund.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:04]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0So what if we didn\u2019t just save it? What if we invested?<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:08]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0We would have to do something different. Or can you take a college money out of an Roth IRA?<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:15]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, you can, and you can always take your principal out after having it open for a few years. The real question, you have $350 extra every single month. Where do you best want it to go?<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:30]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I wanted to go into a college fund.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:32]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, tell me why. Tell me with numbers.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:35]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t really have any logical answer for that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, we need to have it. We can\u2019t make multi-thousand-dollar decisions based on just a feeling. So tell me, let\u2019s come up with the numbers.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:46]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. If my kids go to an in-state school and they get scholarships, it costs 10 to $15,000 a year. I would expect them to work and contribute. The way I came up with the $5,000 per kid is it definitely felt like, okay, well, you still have to figure it out, but we\u2019re going to give you a little safety net. It\u2019s going to be a launching pad, so you\u2019re not starting from scratch.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:20]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s not numbers, that\u2019s a feeling.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:23]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t know how to use numbers instead of feelings. Can you help me?<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:29]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0$350 a month. First of all, how much will that turn into when your kids go to college?<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:36]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Jack will be going to college in four years, so that\u2019s 48 months, so that\u2019s $16,800.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Isn\u2019t that way more than you need for him? How much do you want to give each kid?<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:55]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I wanted to give each of them five grand.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:58]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Didn\u2019t you just finish off everything right there?<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:03]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0And that doesn\u2019t account for any interest that may be earned.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:04]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:12]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So what have you learned already?<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:14]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve already learned that if you do the numbers, it eradicates all of the crazy feelings you have about it because you just see right there.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:24]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:24]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s the answer.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0They\u2019re not crazy. Your feelings are not crazy. You\u2019re not crazy. Your feelings are real. But let me just tell you what would\u2019ve happened if you had only used your feelings. Even if you were saving money for the kids, you still would\u2019ve argued. We need to save more. We need to save more. Why are we going to this trip? Why are we ordering drinks? We could save for the kids more. And you would\u2019ve saved and saved and saved.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:43]\u00a0And then when it came time, you would\u2019ve given more without any regard for numbers, and you would\u2019ve been even more worried afterwards. What are we going to do? Erik, go get a better job. I don\u2019t know what we\u2019re going to do. So your feelings are not crazy. Your feelings are real, but they\u2019re incomplete. And that\u2019s why in just 25 seconds, we discovered if indeed you truly want to give your kids $5,000 each, we get knocked that out right now, but I suspect it\u2019s not really about 5,000.<\/p>\n<p>[01:00:27]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t think it\u2019s about 5,000 either.<\/p>\n<p>[01:00:29]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What is it about?<\/p>\n<p>[01:00:33]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think it\u2019s about me being afraid that my kids will grow up, look back on their lives, and say, why didn\u2019t mom and dad help us more? Oh, it\u2019s because they were broke. They were bad with money. They were broke. They couldn\u2019t help us. That just feels so crushing to me for my kids to feel like I wasn\u2019t able to provide for them in the way that they needed me to.<\/p>\n<p>[01:01:02]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How do you know that they would think that? Because Erik\u2019s family didn\u2019t provide for him and he never once said, oh, my family was broke, and they were terrible.<\/p>\n<p>[01:01:13]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0You don\u2019t think that about your family, Erik?<\/p>\n<p>[01:01:15]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0We have difficulties in other areas, but no, I\u2019ve never thought that. I\u2019ve never resented my mom or family for not helping me with school.<\/p>\n<p>[01:01:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Your kids have time, even if they go into debt. A little bit of debt is not a horrible thing for student loans. It\u2019s not. You two have far less time. You\u2019re in your 40s. You have very low savings. Your investments, you\u2019re at about $50,000. If you want to have a retirement, if you even want to be able to do the things that you talk about doing and take a vacation, unless there\u2019s a dramatic increase in income coming tomorrow, your kids have time, and you two have far less.<\/p>\n<p>[01:02:05]\u00a0And I say this as the son of Indian parents. Indian parents give everything they have to their kids, and so I understand that culture. But I would say that there\u2019s nothing wrong with putting yourselves first, financially speaking. You can still teach your kids a lot. You can still help them get their footing. You could provide for them, but I really would love to see the two of you put yourselves first.<\/p>\n<p>[01:02:33]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t even know what to say to that. I\u2019ve never thought that I even had permission to put myself first. And what you said about they have time and we don\u2019t, that\u2019s so absolutely true, and never crossed my mind, like, I can help them by taking care of myself.<\/p>\n<p>[01:02:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And I think this would be an amazing exercise for the two of you to talk about, hey, what do we want for each of our kids? Let\u2019s sketch it out. Let\u2019s script it. And what would that look like? And if we want them to know that they are valuable enough to spend their money on, how are we going to demonstrate it?<\/p>\n<p>[01:03:11]\u00a0We better be doing that, and we better tell our kids, you know what? Saturday afternoons, mom and dad are going to be here, and we\u2019re going to be talking about money, and we would like you to respect our time. In the last half an hour, yeah, we\u2019ll bring you in and we\u2019d love to talk about a few things with you because money is part of the family. Andrea, I see you lighting up when I\u2019m talking about this. Why is that?<\/p>\n<p>[01:03:33]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s just so exciting. It\u2019s so fun. It\u2019s so hopeful to be able to think like, maybe I\u2019m not going to perpetuate this generational attitude towards money, and maybe I can do it differently and I can bring my kids along on the journey. I love that concept of bringing them along.<\/p>\n<p>[01:03:55]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0It almost connects to what we talked about early on where I was like, I want to have fun with you. I don\u2019t want it always to be this heavy stuff. And to think and have the encouragement that that doesn\u2019t have to be, that means we don\u2019t talk about money, but maybe actually, even these money conversations, like we can have fun, and dream, and hope together.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[01:04:19]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You can see the path that I took to get here. A lot of you message me every day telling me about your partner who won\u2019t look at the spreadsheet, who is always worried about money, and look at how I gently got Andrea to consider another way. One, I listened to her a lot. Number two, I asked her to tell me about her worries and her fears around money, but I did not let her dwell on them.<\/p>\n<p>[01:04:44]\u00a0Number three, I got really curious about the things that she wants to do one day, like the Alaskan cruise. I was genuinely interested in that. Four, I included\u00a0Erik\u00a0because he absolutely plays a part in this.\u00a0And finally, I helped her run a couple of simple numbers that she can deeply understand.<\/p>\n<p>[01:05:04]\u00a0This is transformative for her because she now went one level deeper than the numbers, and she realized, oh my gosh, I can give myself permission to put myself first. Isn\u2019t this amazing? This is why I love my job, and I love being able to share this whole experience with you, because a rich life is about so much more than just the numbers or blindly following what we think we are supposed to\u00a0do.\u00a0It\u2019s about understanding what your rich life is and then using your numbers to start to live it.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[01:05:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So you told me 1,300 per month, right?<\/p>\n<p>[01:05:45]<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[01:05:45]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, so let\u2019s just pretend for easy math you have $0 invested and you\u2019re currently going to do, let\u2019s say 15,000 bucks a year approximately. That\u2019s how much it is approximately. That\u2019s 1,300 times 12, again, approximate 22 years because you\u2019re in your mid-40s. What does that number say? Read it out loud, Andrea.<\/p>\n<p>[01:06:05]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0786,542 and 11 cents.<\/p>\n<p>[01:06:12]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Your belief about debt would\u2019ve just cost you $786,000.<\/p>\n<p>[01:06:20]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Damn. I just didn\u2019t know that.<\/p>\n<p>[01:06:23]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Honestly, what most people don\u2019t ask themselves is if we put all of our resources towards paying off our debt and we\u2019re debt-free at 68 years old, what then? We have a house. We have no debt. What do we have? We have no income anymore because we retired. We have a little meager Social Security check coming. What are we doing? We have nothing to go and live the kind of life we claim we want. That\u2019s not good planning.<\/p>\n<p>[01:06:47]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s very empowering to know that I could make a choice to increase my wealth pretty drastically.<\/p>\n<p>[01:06:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And by the way, if you did this, you know how often you\u2019d have to make this decision to invest?<\/p>\n<p>[01:07:06]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I think you just keep it going. You make it once and let it go.<\/p>\n<p>[01:07:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Set it and forget it. One decision making you three quarters of a million dollars. Now, if your interest rate for your debt was at 7% or 8%, or 26%, I would be like, pay that off as quickly as possible. But when it\u2019s 2.4%, mathematically speaking, it makes no sense to pay it off.<\/p>\n<p>[01:07:32]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Andrea, how do you feel after seeing those compounding numbers? What do you want to automate toward investments, and what do want to put towards debt?<\/p>\n<p>[01:07:45]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, my mind is blown, so I just want to put it all towards investments. I had no idea that that kind of money was even possible for us. Yeah, I feel shocked.<\/p>\n<p>[01:08:02]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Shocked?<\/p>\n<p>[01:08:03]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[01:08:04]\u00a0As you described, for the next 20 years, trying to pay off the debt and then ending up empty handed at the end, I don\u2019t really have anything to my name, but I\u2019m debt-free. But just seeing the possibility of accruing that kind of wealth is just super empowering.<\/p>\n<p>[01:08:28]\u00a0That impulse to protect yourself and to guard what you have is essentially just squeezing the enjoyment out of your life. It\u2019s not actually working. It\u2019s not keeping you safe. And what you think it\u2019s doing, it\u2019s not doing. It\u2019s actually doing the opposite. It\u2019s like creating this life of scarcity.<\/p>\n<p>[01:08:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s powerful.<\/p>\n<p>[01:08:58]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I think that\u2019s what stood out to me, is like, can you drill down to the specifics of why you feel that way, where you\u2019re going, and what you want.<\/p>\n<p>[01:09:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And what\u2019s crazy is in the rare occasions where you row in the same direction, what happens?<\/p>\n<p>[01:09:13]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0We make progress.<\/p>\n<p>[01:09:15]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Huge progress, faster than you ever thought possible. What would it feel like if you were able to do that with your money?<\/p>\n<p>[01:09:23]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0I would feel so much hope. I would feel excited for the first time in a long time.<\/p>\n<p>[01:09:33]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0I think that would begin to really help with my desire for freedom from the weight of money and feeling like the money could actually serve freedom for the things I want to do.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[01:09:50]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0The final thing I did in those last few minutes was to show Andrea with real numbers what her fixation on debt was costing her.\u00a0And the answer was about $750,000.\u00a0Your life is too important to blindly follow some random path that you haven\u2019t even questioned or interrogated or decided for yourself. That is what I want you to take away from this episode and from this entire podcast. Now, let\u2019s hear Andrea\u2019s follow-up.<\/p>\n<p>[01:10:20]\u00a0<strong>Andrea:<\/strong>\u00a0Hey, Ramit. One of the things that surprised me is that debt repayment is not necessarily the best focus for a couple in their 40s and that it\u2019s actually dumb to end up 65 and debt-free but have nothing to our name. And one thing that I learned is that paying for my kids\u2019 college isn\u2019t the end all, be all.<\/p>\n<p>[01:10:47]\u00a0That money isn\u2019t necessarily a sign of love, and that there\u2019s other ways I can support them and be there for them, and that they will value those ways just as much as money. And a change I\u2019m looking forward to making is staying fully engaged with the money, not just avoiding it, hiding from it, letting Erik deal with it, and then nagging him, but to actually dive in and to be unafraid, to be hopeful, to just know that I\u2019m empowered to play a role, that there\u2019s good things out there for us, and that we\u2019re not going to continue living lives of scarcity. We have agency.<\/p>\n<p>[01:11:28]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And now,\u00a0Erik\u2019s follow up.<\/p>\n<p>[01:11:30]\u00a0<strong>Erik:<\/strong>\u00a0Andrea and I learned a lot, but probably the most powerful thing was just the idea of inviting a third party into these important and often difficult conversations. You\u2019d think I\u2019d understand that. I do that a lot with the work I do. But when it comes to money, I think a lot of us don\u2019t think about taking that step was just a really powerful experience. And we\u2019re thankful for that for sure.<\/p>\n<p>[01:11:52]\u00a0So it was really encouraging to hear that, and even though we\u2019re a little behind, that we can do it, and that there\u2019s hope if we take action. We\u2019re definitely going to be making a bunch of changes, cutting things and thinking about money in a little different ways, but probably the biggest change that we\u2019re already starting to make is to prioritize our future, prioritize making money a positive experience for our family.<\/p>\n<p>[01:12:20] Those are probably the two big things. It\u2019s time to invite our kids into this conversation and to invite them into some of the responsibilities of our conscious spending plan as you invited us to do, and that\u2019s really exciting. That\u2019s really good. It\u2019s okay for us to prioritize our future. We want to be generous. We want to be generous with our families. We want to be generous with others, but it\u2019s okay to be generous with our future selves as well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Erik is 44 and Andrea is 43. They\u2019re trying to determine what to do with a bump in income. Andrea wants to save for college tuition, because that\u2019s what her parents did. Erik\u2019s did not, so he\u2019d rather use it elsewhere. Can they overcome their inherited patterns and come together on a shared vision? This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"class_list":["post-118921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast-episodes"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"modified_by":"Nasrin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}