{"id":118931,"date":"2024-01-16T13:29:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T17:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/?p=118931"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:36:15","slug":"139-sandra-brad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/139-sandra-brad\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 139. \u201cI\u2019m afraid he\u2019ll leave if I don\u2019t stop stressing about the budget\u201d (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"\u201cI\u2019m afraid he\u2019ll leave if I keep stressing about money\u201d\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9ZpwQlrD_Hc\" width=\"100%\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/6sHKEwLXcwZeWRrrkV6Fyh?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Sandra is 46. Brad is 48. They have four children and are living a high lifestyle as a result of two generational income explosions tied to Brad\u2019s work in the home lending industry. That variance, though, seeded issues in their money psychology\u2014leading to risky investments and trust issues.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Links mentioned in this episode:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/140-sandra-brad\/\">\u201cHe put our $1M into one risky investment. Will we lose it all?\u201d (Part 2)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>This episode is brought to you by:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Superhuman | Get a free month of lightning fast email at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/try.sprh.mn\/ramitsethi\">https:\/\/try.sprh.mn\/ramitsethi<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Masterclass | For unlimited access to every class and 15% off an annual membership, go to\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/masterclass.com\/ramit\">https:\/\/masterclass.com\/ramit<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>AG1 | Take ownership of your health with AG1. Get one year\u2019s supply of Vitamin D3 K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/drinkag1.com\/ramit\">https:\/\/drinkAG1.com\/ramit<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Facet | Get affordable, accessible financial planning with a flat fee membership. For a limited time, the $250 enrollment fee will be waived when you sign up at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/facet.com\/ramit\">https:\/\/facet.com\/ramit<\/a><\/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<h2><strong>Tools mentioned in this episode<\/strong><\/h2>\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<h2><strong>Show Transcript<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>[00:00:00]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0For me, I felt like he wasn\u2019t doing his job.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:02]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Because his job was to earn money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:04]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. Sometimes I just say, well, I don\u2019t know what else to do. I\u2019m working as hard as I can. I guess we\u2019re just going to be in the red. I can\u2019t do anything about it. I guess we\u2019re just going to be broke.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:15]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s where my empathy ends. I get very frustrated with that same conversation over and over and over, whether we\u2019ve got a lot of money in the bank account or whether we\u2019ve got very little money in the bank account. I feel like we\u2019re playing a very, very opposite game.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:31]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0On paper, we\u2019re not broke, but it just feels like we are.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:34]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve supported the family for the last 25 years, and then she reminds me about that one year where we had to sign up for discounted school lunches. And yeah, it can be pretty nasty.<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:47]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Because I can\u2019t ever hit the number. And I feel like we try really, really hard, but I just don\u2019t think it\u2019s even possible.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:00:55]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Meet\u00a0Sandra and Brad. Sandra is 46. Brad is 48. They have four children, and they are living a pretty high lifestyle, private school, ballet, sports camps. They have a bedroom set that costs $25,000. In the past, they have had a very high income, but things have changed. When their income went down, they started to get a lot more stressed out about money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:01:22]\u00a0And now they are both resentful for different reasons. She resents him and his income. He resents her and her anxiety around money. Well, I\u2019ll tell you that this conversation had a ton of surprising turns. So I want you to pay close attention today. I\u2019m going to make sure that throughout the episode, I share what I\u2019m thinking and a little bit of the psychology that I am observing.<\/p>\n<p>[00:01:47]\u00a0Now, in their application, Sandra mentioned that Brad has had to ask for money in the past to buy a Slurpee. And I want to start there because that origin of the story has affected the way that they both think about money for a long time. Listen in.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:04]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0When we were first married, we made $11,000 the first year that we were married, and we were in school, very poor, and I managed the budget from the very beginning. And there was no room for anything extra. Literally, nothing extra. So in the beginning, it was very contentious when he would want to go and get something. And I didn\u2019t grow up in a house where he\u2019d go to get Slurpees.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:28]\u00a0That was a luxury to get sodas and things like that. But for him, that was something he just wanted to enjoy. And so it became something where he would say that very thing, that I have to get permission to go and get a Slurpee. And eventually we tried to make it into a positive thing and have it be our Slurpee fund.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:47]\u00a0So each of us had a Slurpee fund, and you could spend it on whatever you wanted, but in the beginning, it was really negative, and it is something that\u2019s still brought up, I don\u2019t think, in a very positive way.<\/p>\n<p>[00:02:57]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s interesting. Do you still have a Slurpee fund?<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:02]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0No.<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:03]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What happened to it?<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:04]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Our money has gone so up and down over the years that if we have extra, then the Slurpee fund is massive and you can buy anything you want and come home with ATVs and whatever. And I just go, oh, you bought another ATV. But when money\u2019s tight, I\u2019m watching every single thing and texting him and saying, what was this for, and what was this $12 for? When I\u2019m balancing the budget. So it dies when there\u2019s not excess. When there\u2019s excess, we have Slurpee funds.<\/p>\n<p>[00:03:33]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0For me, it was comic relief. It was a way for me to joke around about this new environment that I was experiencing as a newlywed. I didn\u2019t grow up in a wealthy home, but I didn\u2019t ever felt like I was an extravagant spender. But when we first got married, this whole idea of a budget was a new concept to me. And I felt like it was pretty harsh and it was pretty severe. We canceled our telephone for 25 bucks a month. So like we were living lives of a nomad.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:08]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0There were no cell phones, right? You had no phone.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:11]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:11]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0We have no phone.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:11]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, and this was back in 1998, and there was no cell phones. So we were saving 25 bucks a month, but we didn\u2019t have a phone. It was a shtick that I used to just try to find some white heartedness in the whole situation. It was difficult dealing with this budget into that extreme. I think we had $100 per month set aside for food when we were first starting to figure it out.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How long have you been married for?<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:37]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a025.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:38]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Congratulations.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:39]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:40]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a025 this year?<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:41]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a025. Will be 26 in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:44]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0So yeah, 25 this year.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:45]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Congratulations. That\u2019s a big deal.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:47]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:04:48]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. All right. So I have a question about money and being married for 25 years. I completely understand that when a lot of couples get married, coming together is hard enough. And oftentimes, if you\u2019re getting married pretty young, it\u2019s doubly hard because you\u2019re not making a lot of money. Okay. So I get that. Has it changed over time?<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:16]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Which aspect as far as\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:18]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Did money ever become easy?<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:20]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, but it doesn\u2019t stay easy. It became easy when we were making a lot of money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:28]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. And when you say easy, describe that for me. What does easy mean to you?<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:32]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0We didn\u2019t worry about budgeting things. I always knew there was plenty and then some to work with. I didn\u2019t have to ask permission. He didn\u2019t ask permission. We just bought what we wanted to.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. That\u2019s easy. Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:46]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, it was so easy.<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And just so I understand, when you say there was plenty, you mean there was plenty of money in your checking account, right?<\/p>\n<p>[00:05:53]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0And we were putting money into 401k, and we had self-directed IRAs and things like that. Because there was so much money we needed something to do with it. But mostly, there was plenty in checking. I never had to worry that a bill was going to come out and it was going to overdraft. I could plan an extra day on our trip and stop at Disney World on the way home and take the four kids and not worry about it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:15]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And then what about when it was not easy?<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:18]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s been, I feel like, more of the time that it\u2019s not been easy in that way. When it\u2019s not easy, it\u2019s watching everything and being meticulous with where the money\u2019s going and keeping track of it and being stressed about it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:37]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Just like you used to do when you made $11,000.<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:40]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah. Actually, that probably felt less stressful because I knew we were so dirt broke that nothing was an option. And I didn\u2019t have any kids that needed anything, and I was very good at self-sacrificing, and so it wasn\u2019t a big deal to me. I\u2019ve thought about this a lot. I think it was like a badge of honor. Look at how much I can do with so little.<\/p>\n<p>[00:06:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. And who taught you that? Your mom?<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:02]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm, definitely. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:03]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm. Okay. Brad, has money gotten easier since the Slurpee stuff? Harder or both?<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:14]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s been a rollercoaster. Good years and bad years. So for better or worse, I\u2019m an entrepreneur in my guts. So we had an opportunity to make some entrepreneurial moves, commission-type moves, 100% opportunity base.<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:33]\u00a0And for the most part, it\u2019s been steady. In some years, they\u2019ve been like out of control when we\u2019re bringing in 70 to $100,000 per month. And those are some of the best times of our marriage, when we aren\u2019t having that level of friction or stress that\u2019s pressing down on the marriage. But there\u2019ve been some lean months too.<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What made it the best years of your marriage?<\/p>\n<p>[00:07:59]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0The financial considerations weren\u2019t the top considerations.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:04]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What was?<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:06]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Where we were going to travel, where we were going to go to, what opportunities we could provide to our kids, not having to worry about that dreadful end of month coming-to-God moment when we have to reconcile the budget.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How many times do you remember, over the course of a 25 year marriage, you\u2019ve had that coming-to-God conversation?<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:31]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a025 times 12.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:34]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Minus a couple of years. It\u2019s pretty much monthly.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:40]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Minus a couple of years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So Sandra, when you\u2019re doing these end-of-the-month calculations, walk me through what you\u2019re calculating.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:52]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I feel like you\u2019re going to make fun of me, but I have a lot of spreadsheets and lots of categories. Too many, I am sure.<\/p>\n<p>[00:08:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Can we just hear what some of those categories are? Read them off. I know they\u2019re on your computer right now in front of you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:03]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0They are.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:04]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Of course. One click away. They\u2019re never closed.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:07]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I know. They\u2019re never closed. You\u2019re so right. I was just working on it, so I would blame some of it on that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:12]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Shocking. All right. Just read some of those categories off. Love for the whole world to hear it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:16]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. We have auto repairs, auto registration, ballet camp, basketball, camp, books, birthdays, Ryan Cancun trip. I don\u2019t know how to take them off once I put a trip on there. I don\u2019t lump them all together. Every trip is separate.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:30]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You break out by trip. Not just travel, but by trip. Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:33]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, because I feel like you have to budget for each trip. Dog food, cinema.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:37]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Dog food wet, dog food dry, dog food organic.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:42]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0No, I only have one line for that, like clothing. I put Costco annual fee because it surprised me, and I was like, I\u2019m going to put that in there.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:50]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much is the Costco annual fee?<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:52]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0It was $193.<\/p>\n<p>[00:09:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, let\u2019s talk about this for a second. So $193, and you have a line item for it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:00]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I know it only comes up once a year. I didn\u2019t know what to do with it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:03]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, so talk me through your thinking because I want to understand this meeting. And part of this meeting is the intense amount of categories. So you have a Costco renewals, $193.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:14]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:14]\u00a0Ramit:\u00a0You didn\u2019t know where to do it, so you added a category, right?<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:17]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. I just put a category.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:19]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How many categories approximately? To the closest 50, show many categories do you have?<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:26]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, it\u2019s not that bad. Okay. I have 82.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:32]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. This is going to be good. When you look at this spreadsheet, when you look at it, what do you feel? First word?<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:43]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Sick.<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So walk me through\u2013 what happens around the 25th of the month? What do you do?<\/p>\n<p>[00:10:51]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Lately, I\u2019ve been doing it every week. But just because things are pretty tight, it feels like to me they\u2019re really tight. And normally, I\u2019ll go through all of our credit cards and our checking and everything and put all of the charges in and then categorize those super manually.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:07]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So you log into whatever credit cards you have, and there\u2019s a thing that says $13 and 64 cents, and you copy that and paste it in to the spreadsheet.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:16]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh my gosh. I feel like you\u2019re laughing. Okay. Yes. That is what I do. And then I have to take all of those numbers and put them into the budget spreadsheet because I don\u2019t really know how to make them talk to each other. So there\u2019s two different spreadsheets. One that\u2019s the charges and one that\u2019s the budget. So I literally am manually putting them over, which is why I started doing it once a week, because once a month, it was really big and took forever and overwhelmed me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:38]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, if you do something that\u2019s stressful and makes you feel sick and then your husband hates it, you definitely want to do it four times as much. I got you. Okay. Stick with me. Stick with me. So you\u2019re doing all this, and as you are doing it, what do you feel?<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:57]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Guilty.<\/p>\n<p>[00:11:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Why?<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:00]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Because I can\u2019t ever hit the number.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:03]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. The numbers that you set up for yourself.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:06]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. And I feel like we try really, really hard, but I just don\u2019t think it\u2019s even possible.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:13]\u00a0And if it is good, I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s nice. I\u2019m like, oh, we did really good. But usually by the first week in the month, I already know that all that money\u2019s allocated. And so the whole rest of the month, it\u2019s super stressful to buy anything, even if it\u2019s stuff that we need, because I know that we\u2019re already like at our capacity.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:31]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s like you\u2019re failing a test. You\u2019re back in school. You\u2019re failing a test. But it\u2019s every single week.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:39]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. I\u2019m a straight A student. It\u2019s very frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:42]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah. Well, that can\u2019t feel good.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:47]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0No, and I\u2019m always the one that\u2019s done it. It\u2019s always been me doing it. And so it just has been a lot of years of being stressed by it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You do this alone in your office?<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:58]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:12:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. So you\u2019re taking the numbers from the credit card, you\u2019re putting it into this spreadsheet, you\u2019re looking at these numbers most of the time, not really adding up, so you end up in the red.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:09]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Sometimes I just say, I don\u2019t know what else to do. I\u2019m working as hard as I can. I guess we\u2019re just going to be in the red, because I don\u2019t know what else to do with it. I sometimes ambush him at inappropriate moments and tell him about how bad our money looks for the month before we\u2019re going to bed. And it\u2019s late, and we\u2019re tired.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you say?<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:33]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, we have no more money left this month. And it was probably like the eighth of the month.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Is that true? You have no more money by the eighth of the month?<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:43]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0No, it\u2019s just that it\u2019s all allocated. Something will be charged on the 25th of the month on our account, but I allocate it at the beginning, so I know it\u2019s going to be coming out.<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:53]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0When you bring up something like that at night before you\u2019re going to sleep, what happens?<\/p>\n<p>[00:13:58]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Usually Brad doesn\u2019t want to talk about it. Shocker. And so I\u2019m not really good at letting things go. I feel like I need resolution, and so I will press it, and then it usually ends up with a little bit of stonewalling and a little bit of a fight. And then it sits really uncomfortably. It just stays with me. And I don\u2019t know how to let that go, so it affects a lot of things.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Does it change the financial reality?<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:27]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0No.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:28]\u00a0Brad:\u00a0Even these last couple of months, I\u2019m driving 66 miles down the freeway so that we can hit our gas budget. So when she\u2019s measuring and managing the budget, I\u2019m all in, doing everything that I can so that we can hit those numbers, but the numbers are difficult to me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:42]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Which is why some months I just say, well, I can\u2019t do anything about it. I guess we\u2019re just going to be broke.<\/p>\n<p>[00:14:49]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Well, you\u2019re not broke, and I can see Brad\u2019s eyes. Okay, Brad. All right, Brad. Come on in. Brad\u2019s eyes just went extremely wide, like some type of cartoon character. Brad, would you care to chime in here? Are you broke? Yes or no?<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:06]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0No.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:07]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. I agree you\u2019re not broke. Sandra, are you broke? Yes or no?<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:13]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0On paper, we\u2019re not broke, but it just feels like we are.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:16]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0When I hear Sandra go through this process in her room alone, and I see the tears, it makes my heart hurt. And there is turmoil at the end of the month when we have those late night conversations. But that\u2019s where my empathy ends.<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:39]\u00a0I get very frustrated with that same conversation over and over and over again, whether we\u2019ve got a lot of money in the bank account or whether we\u2019ve got very little money in the bank account. I feel like we\u2019re playing a very, very opposite game.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:15:55]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Just notice this set of highly detailed rituals that Sandra has created for herself with her financial system. All for what? Why create 82 categories and manually copy and paste in tiny expenses every single month? Well, the answer is control. Most people genuinely believe that this process of tracking every last cent puts them in control of their money. And in fact, this is what they saw their parents doing, usually their mom. People even describe this process as managing money. But it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:34]\u00a0The reality is that most of this is pointless. Manually copying in values from a website to a spreadsheet is not high value work. Nor does it change your financial reality. Sandra can do this for the rest of her life, and it won\u2019t change a thing. And we know that\u2019s true because she\u2019s been doing it forever\u00a0and she still feels awful about her money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:16:59]\u00a0\u00a0In my opinion, managing money is focusing on high value areas, like deciding what your rich life is, setting up appropriate categories, and discussing what kind of monitoring you want for those categories. Managing money is deciding on critical questions like your savings rate and your debt payoff date.<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:20]\u00a0Those decisions are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Driving 66 miles an hour to conserve gas might feel like it\u2019s giving you control, but it\u2019s ultimately pointless. And I suspected this might be the central issue between Sandra and Brad,\u00a0but I was wrong.<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:38]\u00a0We\u2019ll be right back.<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:40]\u00a0Let\u2019s get back to the show.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:17:42]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0I feel like Sandra is playing a fixed income must be greater than fixed expenses on a monthly basis, and that\u2019s where the A comes into place, or the F depending on how we\u2019re doing in a particular month. I\u2019ve always played the net worth game. And even more than that, I play the, I trust myself to generate income game during those late-night conversations.<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:12]\u00a0And she expresses we\u2019re failing this month because the fixed expenses were higher than our fixed income. And I say something along the lines of, listen, I\u2019ve supported the family for the last 25 years, and then she reminds me about that one year where we had to sign up for discounted school lunches because adjusted gross income allowed us to participate in that. It was a lean year.<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:38] I say something along the lines of I\u2019ve done good in the past, and I believe that I\u2019ll be able to do good in the future. That has no weight or any credibility, because the only thing that\u2019s on the table is September 20th of that particular month.<\/p>\n<p>[00:18:59]\u00a0And it gets nasty. I think she might\u2019ve actually underestimated the stonewalling and the fighting. There have been nights where we have ended in a scenario where we don\u2019t talk for the next couple of days. And yeah, it can be pretty nasty. And then frankly speaking, when we start looking at in the future\u2013 now, I love this woman in my guts. She\u2019s my partner. She\u2019s my person.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:26] But there have been times where I\u2019ve thought to myself, I\u2019m not going to do this for the next 25 years. I\u2019m 48. She\u2019s a couple of years younger. We\u2019ve still got many, many years behind\u2013 if we had got to do this every single month and go to a level of mental poverty, even though we\u2019ve got $1.3 million worth of assets, I have a hard time existing in that space.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:50]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, okay. Thank you for being honest. Obviously, this has been going on for decades.<\/p>\n<p>[00:19:58]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:01]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Sounds pretty serious. Would you both agree?<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:04]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. We had a conversation, and it just went south real fast, and we didn\u2019t talk for a while afterwards. And that was when I thought, we need to see if maybe we can get some help with this to see it the same. And I don\u2019t need to have him see it my way. We need to see it more commonly. That was what I think led me to turn in the application.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:27]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:28]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0It was one of those days.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:29]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0At this point, what percentage of money conversations between the two of you are positive and what percentage are negative?<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:42]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019d say probably 20% positive and 80% negative.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Brad?<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:48]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0I agree with that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:49]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0That makes me super sad.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:52]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:20:54]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Because I\u2019ve always thought that we have more potential than where we\u2019re at currently, right this minute. And I think there\u2019s been times where we\u2019ve definitely exceeded and done a really good job with things. Not growing up with a lot of like extra money, I just have always thought eventually we\u2019d like make it. And I don\u2019t really know what make it means, but we would get where it was different than I felt growing up, but it still feels the same, so I would not want to feel this way always.<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:21]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Then I\u2019m ashamed to say it\u2019s very real in my mind when I\u2019m in that space. Yeah, I was there this last winter. I\u2019ve peaked. I\u2019ve got no more ambition. I\u2019ve got no more energy. I\u2019ve gone through all this entrepreneurial stuff. It\u2019s time to just settle down.<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:40]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Right, right. Almost like you\u2019ve lost the game.<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:43]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Giving up.<\/p>\n<p>[00:21:44]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, you gave up. You hung up your jersey. You go, I couldn\u2019t cut it on the field. And so now I\u2019m not even playing anymore. All just so my wife can get an A in this game that I think to you feels meaningless. Is that accurate?<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:08]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Not meaningless. So if we\u2019re continuing on the sports metaphor, it\u2019s like the game of basketball, is more than just getting rebounds.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:16]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You\u2019re going to have to walk me through this because I\u2019m on thin ice right now, understanding where we\u2019re going with this basketball. So walk me through the analogy.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:23]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Sandra is playing a very small portion of the overall game. She\u2019s playing the monthly portion or the monthly budget portion of the game, which, as part of the analogy, would be just rebounds in basketball. And you\u2019re never going to win a basketball game if you\u2019re only focusing on rebounds and you\u2019re not playing offense and you\u2019re not playing defense.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0But would you agree that it\u2019s important that you have to get some number of rebounds?<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:49]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. That\u2019s why I didn\u2019t want to say that I felt like the game that Sandra\u2019s playing is meaningless, because it is a vital piece of the overall game.<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:57]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0But it\u2019s a small piece in your\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:22:58]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0But it\u2019s a small piece. And for me, the game is much bigger.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:03]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Fair enough. Sandra, let\u2019s stick on this basketball analogy. Do you agree that rebounding or what you do with tracking the spending is a small part, or do you see it as the part when it comes to money?<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:20]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I think for me it\u2019s been the part, but a large portion of that is because until a year and a half ago, I didn\u2019t provide much income to the family. And so that was my version of contributing was to manage the money that came in.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:35]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Manage means what?<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:37]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, you\u2019re going to laugh at me again. Just watching how much we\u2019re spending and paying the bills. I realize that\u2019s not managing. I know a computer can do that. But that is what I did because that was what was my responsibility from the time that we were very first married. And so it was the whole game to me because that was the only position that the coach gave me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:23:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm. By the way, did you ever discuss this? Did you ever discuss your roles formally and explicitly?<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:06]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t really think so. We were so young. I was only 20 and Brad was 23. My mom had always managed the money. His parent had separate accounts and each paid for different things in the family and didn\u2019t have combined finances. And I always thought that was a sign of a poor marriage, that you should do it together and whatever.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0But you don\u2019t do it together.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:27]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0No, we don\u2019t really. But my mom wears the pants in my house growing up. And so my dad brings check home and just give it to her, and then she would stretch it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:38]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Play that analogy out for me. She wears the pants means he went to work. Did your mom work?<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:44]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0She always did little things to supplement, but she never worked full-time outside of the house until we were all grown.<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:49]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. So when you say your dad handed the check over to her, what\u2019s the implication when he hands the check over to her?<\/p>\n<p>[00:24:57]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0That she\u2019s now in charge of it. It\u2019s her money to manage, and it\u2019s his job to earn it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:01]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. And if I were to ask them, are they both alive?<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:06]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, they are.<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Both still married or no?<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:09]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Still married 40-some years. Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Wow, cool. Congratulations to that. That\u2019s amazing. So if I were to ask them, do they agree with your assessment, like he makes the money and her job is to manage it, would they both agree?<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:23]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>100%. Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:24]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. And then what about decisions like buying a house, buying a car, investing? Who made those decisions?<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:34]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019m not sure if they made them together. It was always my mom that seemed to be the driver of it, but I\u2019m sure they talked about it. They didn\u2019t ever talk about it in front of us, like who was making a decision. They would just come and tell us we\u2019re moving or we\u2019re selling the house, or we\u2019re going somewhere different. And we moved a lot, so it was a conversation we got to have, like 14 times, growing up, we moved.<\/p>\n<p>[00:25:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And you ever remember mom talking about money when you were a kid?<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:00]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Only to say this is all we have for the rest of the month, or you can\u2019t get new shoes for school, but we\u2019ll buy shoe laces, and we\u2019ll wash your shoes, and that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How old were you when you heard that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:13]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Young, starting eight, nine years old. We always bought everything from thrift stores. I had one pair of shoes for track and cross country through high school, and she told me, you have to make those last. How do you make them last when you\u2019re running 15 miles a day in practice?<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:28]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How do you think your mom\u2019s comments and behavior towards money shaped your own?<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:36]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Makes me scared that there\u2019s not going to be enough and that it\u2019s all in me too to make sure that there will be enough. I have to be the safe one.<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Can I ask the question again? I\u2019m not sure you heard me. How do you think that your mom\u2019s comments about money and her behavior towards money shaped your views of money?<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:26:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I just want to cut in here to point out what just happened. Did you catch it? I asked, how did your mom\u2019s comments and behaviors towards money shape your own? And Sandra just launched right back into her own story. I\u2019m scared there\u2019s not going to be enough. I have to be the safe one. She didn\u2019t even hear what I asked.<\/p>\n<p>[00:27:17]\u00a0And this is common with people who have created narratives about themselves. People with problems love to talk about their problems. And people who live a story love to talk about that story. But the truth is, those stories often aren\u2019t even true. The stories are often something we just slid into. I much prefer to create my own story.\u00a0It\u2019s empowering. I can be funny. I can be fit. I can be compassionate. I choose my story. But to choose your own, you have to first understand the story that you\u2019ve been telling yourself.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:27:53]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How do you think that your mom\u2019s comments about money and her behavior towards money shaped your views of money?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:02]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I think I probably see it the same with her.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me about that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:09]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0There\u2019s just not enough. There\u2019s just never going to be enough. And as soon as you have some, something\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:16]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:17]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0And then it\u2019s all going to be gone again. So you have to l hold onto it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:23]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:24]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0But even when you try things outside of your control are going to occur, and the money\u2019s going to have to be spent on some things. You\u2019re never going to get ahead.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So that\u2019s life. You try as hard as you can, and then you die.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:37]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Pretty much. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hmm. Religious family, or no?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:42]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, very, very religious. Christian.<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:45]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What if your family had started making a lot of money? What would\u2019ve happened?<\/p>\n<p>[00:28:54]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t think my mom would\u2019ve acted any different. She was very judgemental at people who had a lot of money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, that\u2019s so shocking. I had no idea that I was going to get to that with one question. She was judgmental because?<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:10]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0She felt like they flaunted it, that it became the thing that was most important to them, that they didn\u2019t service and other people, that it was all about the money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Where do you think she got that message from?<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:28]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Would she have got those ideas from religion? Is that what you mean? Oh yeah. Yeah. That you have to be giving and generous, and that it makes other people feel bad about themselves if you show that you have all this money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:38]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. And are you two religious?<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:41]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:29:41]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Has that shaped your views on money? Actually, let me ask the question a different way because already know the answer to that. It definitely has. How has your faith and your religious background shaped your views of money?<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:00]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Brad, you answered that one first because I\u2019m not sure. I\u2019m curious what you\u2019ll say.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:03]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0This a mess. This is something that I really struggle with.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:07]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So in our belief system, we are taught that if you\u2019re righteous, then you receive blessings.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:16]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Righteous means what?<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:18]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Living the commandments, for lack of a better term, to a high degree. And if you\u2019re unrighteous, then those blessings are taken away from you. And so that puts us in a situation where when things are going good, you\u2019re scratching your head thinking, boy, I must be really doing good. I must really be living by this belief system.<\/p>\n<p>[00:30:41]\u00a0Or when things are going bad, you and or your spouse might feel part of the problem is that you\u2019re not living righteously enough. And so that\u2019s something I struggle with, and frankly, I\u2019ve been doing my best to separate that belief system and just try to just be a little bit more dollars and cents with them.<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:06]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I do know that when we had more fluence, we were more liberal with our donations to our church, like tithes. And since things had been tighter, that\u2019s not happening as much. And so, yes, in my mind, there\u2019s some belief correlation that we should be paying tithes even when things are hard, because that\u2019s where you sacrifice and get blessings.<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:28]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Right.<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:29]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Whether they\u2019re financial or not.<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:31]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, okay. All right. Well, thank you for walking me through that. So you manage the money, as you put it, which means you pay the bills. And in that way, Brad\u2019s responsibility has been what?<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:47]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0To earn the money, just like my parents.<\/p>\n<p>[00:31:49]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So I think a common thread through the beginning of our talk until now is that we really don\u2019t have specific conversations about finances other than to just argue right and wrong and take our positions. So no, we don\u2019t have those conversations. How I would describe it is there\u2019s jabs that are taken that, hey, maybe we\u2019d be in a better position.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:32:12]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What I just learned is that Sandra and Brad are repeating several money stories, stories of their parents, of their religion. And that alone is fine. Most of us have stories that we repeat from those who came before us. That\u2019s okay. But I also learned that they don\u2019t talk about these stories. They never do.<\/p>\n<p>[00:32:32]\u00a0In fact, when they talk about money, it\u2019s almost always negative, and it\u2019s filled with jabs, to the point that Brad has mentioned he\u2019s considered divorce. And the longer you go without acknowledging your stories and talking about them, the more entrenched they become.<\/p>\n<p>[00:32:49]\u00a0Soon, you start to believe your stories, and you and your stories become inextricably intertwined.\u00a0But they\u2019re not. You are not your stories. And I hope that as you hear this, it empowers you to question the beliefs that you grew up with, the beliefs that you have now, and also, the beliefs about who you want to be in the next chapter of your life.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:09]\u00a0It might be that, I wasn\u2019t good with money growing up, but now I\u2019m changing that.\u00a0It might be, nobody taught me how to connect with my emotions growing up, but I\u2019m learning the skills to be able to do that with my spouse. Whatever your story was, interrogate it and ask yourself, do I want to change that story for the next chapter of my life? Because you have more control over your story and your money than you can possibly imagine.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:39]\u00a0Let\u2019s take a quick pause for a message from our sponsors.<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:43]\u00a0I now turn to Brad to ask him about his career.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:46]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You were in the mortgage industry. I think you were doing very well. Mortgage industry came to a standstill. How much were you making at the peak in that industry?<\/p>\n<p>[00:33:57]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So there were two mortgage eras. The most recent mortgage era was 2020 through 2022, and we were at 25 or 30,000 a month.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:08]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. And that\u2019s just you?<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:10]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, that was just me.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, cool. What about before that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:14]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So, back in the 2013 era, it was the peak. There was about two years where we were hitting between 70 and 60,000 per month.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0For two years?<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:27]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Close to. There was also an event business that was built into that. So we hit two home runs at the same time. And I would say that, yeah, for that two year period, we made a lot of money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s a lot of money. So what\u2019d you do with all that money?<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:42]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0We had some lean years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:47]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, it got cannibalized when we didn\u2019t have money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:51]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0And we spent a lot.<\/p>\n<p>[00:34:52]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hold on, hold on. Let\u2019s get into this. 70,000 a month. So you\u2019re making 800,000 a year, which is a tremendous amount of money. Is that ballpark right?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:03]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I think it was about that because when you were doing the events, some weekends you\u2019d make a $100,000 in a weekend gross. So it was probably about 800,000.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:15]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. So you made a couple of million bucks or 1.5 to $2 million over two years. And what\u2019d you do with the money?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:22]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0We bought a house.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:26]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0At the time, it was only 550, And we put down a pretty big down payment. So we were only\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:32]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:33]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0About 300,000.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:34]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So you put 300k into a house. What else?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:38]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0We paid\u00a0lot of taxes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:42]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0ATV.<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:42]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Taxes. Let\u2019s say you paid half. All right, so 700,000 has gone to taxes. So now you have 700,000 left. 300 went to the house. You got 400 left. What\u2019d you do?<\/p>\n<p>[00:35:52]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. So then we paid living expenses for those two years. We bought ATVs. We bought furniture sets. And even after the income dried up, we had a good nest egg, but then we had lean years moving into 16, 17, and 18. So we still had some event income coming in, but we bridged the delta with the savings from the previous years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:20]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How long did it take you to cut your spending down after the high income dried up?<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:28]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0We never did.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:29]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Exactly.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:31]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0We never did. Our kids had no idea that we weren\u2019t making the same amount of money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:36]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You never told them.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:38]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0No. It was never really a conversation. And we just kept going off of the savings because we aren\u2019t huge spenders as far as like big lavish things. I bought a bedroom set.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:48]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What are you talking about? What did you just spend the last three minutes talking about?<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:52]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Those are his ATV toys. I just bought a bedroom set. Okay, it was a lot. It was Restoration Hardware. It was $25,000.<\/p>\n<p>[00:36:59]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. So just a cruise liner is very difficult to stop, it can\u2019t stop on a dime, people spending, particularly when they\u2019re making a lot of money, is incredibly difficult to slow down. It\u2019s like an NFL player. They finally get cut. They don\u2019t stop spending. This is really common. All right. So that brings us into about 2020 when you started making a bunch of money again.<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:24]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0When we first started making some money with the last refi boom, it was just an opportunity to breathe. It was so nice to have some money that was coming in again, but there was still this thought looming in the back of our head that this opportunity is going to dry up at some\u2013 at least it was in my mind.<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:45]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Should be in everyone who works in any mortgage industry. It\u2019s boom and bust.<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:50]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:51]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. But what was the first thing you bought when the income started coming back in?<\/p>\n<p>[00:37:56]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t think we bought anything. We moved to help my son, our son, and we moved somewhere\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:04]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s fast forwarding to 20\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:06]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a02021, the summer of 2021. I don\u2019t remember going and buying anything.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:13]\u00a0Brad:\u00a0We saved most of that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:14] Yeah, we did because it had been so lean. It was really stressful, and I was still driving the same Honda Odyssey I\u2019d had forever. I drove until it had 250,000 miles on it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:23]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. I have to say I\u2019m impressed. I\u2019m impressed. A lot of times it\u2019s like finding water in the desert for the second time, and you just gorge yourself.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:35]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0No, just wait. It\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:36]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Wait, at least let me appreciate it. I didn\u2019t even know what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:40]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s a mirage.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:42]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0So that was 2020. So a year later, my son was finishing his sophomore year in high school and was really, really struggling. Brad is from\u00a0Jackson Hole, Wyoming. That\u2019s where he grew up, and it\u2019s one of the most expensive counties in the entire nation to live in.<\/p>\n<p>[00:38:57]\u00a0And his family is still there. His parents are there, and we love it there. And we went up to visit, and it was the summer of 2021. And my son had a fantastic experience up there and was a new kid and came back to life. We had been so worried about him that I just saw that as a good opportunity to maybe help him.<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:16]\u00a0So within a month, we moved the entire family. It was a huge shift. We rented out our house that we\u2019d been living in that was our dream house or whatever. And rents up there were close to $10,000 a month for just a house. It was the only house we could even find to rent. And so all that great income that we were being careful to preserve really quickly went away because cost of living there was probably about 30% more than it was where we were living.<\/p>\n<p>[00:39:45]\u00a0Honestly, I would do it again because it really did save my son. And he\u2019s in college now. He had no ambition or intention to do anything like that. And the environment was perfect for him. So yeah, but that\u2019s where all of it went. And it was really hard to have this great income coming in and it all being spent and knowing that it would\u2019ve been totally different had we not moved. So it was rough.<\/p>\n<p>[00:40:10]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I get you. Who can tell a parent, oh, you shouldn\u2019t spend money knowing that\u2013 as you put it, your son came back to life. Who can ever tell any two parents that? Not me. It\u2019s not my money, and it\u2019s not my right. And honestly, the way you talk about it, I respect that you said, look, I would do it again.<\/p>\n<p>[00:40:30]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm. It was the right move.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:40:32]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I love that part where Sandra and Brad spent several minutes telling me how they made 800,000 a year and bought a new house and ATVs and a 25,000-bedroom set, and then Sandra casually goes, we aren\u2019t spenders as far as big, lavish things. Do you understand what I\u2019m talking about when I say that money is at least as much about psychology as it is about numbers?<\/p>\n<p>[00:40:59]\u00a0Sandra loves her money stories. This story is we\u2019re not lavish spenders. We\u2019re just simple people, even though the numbers clearly say the opposite. And the truth is, all of us do this in one way or another. We\u2019ll say, I\u2019m not good at money, but we never bought a single book about personal finance, such as the best-selling book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich.<\/p>\n<p>[00:41:21]\u00a0One last thing. My comment about spending a ton of money for their son might surprise you. How can I be okay with people spending or even overspending on their kids?\u00a0Well,\u00a0sometimes you have to make decisions that aren\u2019t in the spreadsheet.<\/p>\n<p>[00:41:37]\u00a0And if that comes to your kid\u2019s mental health, then maybe that\u2019s one of those times. I\u2019ll tell you what. When I talk to people and they tell me what they care about, deep down it is rarely an ATV or a couch. It\u2019s their family. It\u2019s their time together. It\u2019s creating memories and experiences. So sometimes you have to take that carefully manicured spreadsheet and throw it away for the love of the people around you.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:00]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0It was the right move, but it wasn\u2019t the right move forever, so we are not living there anymore.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:04]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0He graduated, and then you all decided, okay, it\u2019s too expensive here. We\u2019re going to go somewhere else.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:11]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What\u2019d you do then?<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:12]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0So we moved suddenly as well, but in the meantime, we had sold our home. So currently, we don\u2019t own a house, and we\u2019re renting a house.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much did you sell it for?<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:24]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0What?<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:24]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a01.2.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a01.2. And how much did you take after all this stuff?<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:30]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0We took about 8\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:33]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Close to 850.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much had you bought that house? Just so I know.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:34]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0565.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:38]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, about 565. And then by the time we landscaped it, it was about 650 for the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:43]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0650. And you sold it for 1.2 minus all that stuff. Okay. So you walked away with some amount of money. Good. And that money, I understand, you\u2019ve kept it. It\u2019s sitting in your accounts.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:56]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>[00:42:57]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Did you feel different when you made $80,000 in a month?<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:01]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you know what? Actually, it was really nice. I don\u2019t feel like I stressed. I know it\u2019s supposed to not make a difference really, but I think it was enough over the threshold that it was like, this is so great. It was such a contrast to what we\u2019d had, so I was very much more relaxed, but I found other things to be unhappy about, I\u2019ll be honest.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:19]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Really?<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:19]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:20]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Like what?<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:21]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Just whiny stuff. I had kids at home. I just complained about the kids and my schedule and I wasn\u2019t even working. Looking back, I have no idea why I was complaining. I had a bougie life.<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:32]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hold on. Zoom in on that. Looking back, why do you think you found something else to be unhappy about?<\/p>\n<p>[00:43:39]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Partly because I feel like you\u2019re always supposed to be growing and getting better. Partly because I wasn\u2019t doing a lot of self-growth at that time. Everything was focused on my kids, and I wasn\u2019t really doing a lot for myself at the time. And so I think I just got really whiny about that. But I did it by expressing discontent in a lot of areas in life.<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:05]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. But what happened when Brad stopped earning 80,000 a month? Sandra, what happened in terms of the dynamics in the relationship?<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:16]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0In a way, for me, I felt like he wasn\u2019t doing his job anymore.<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Because his job was to earn money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:22]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. His job was to earn money, and I did all the other things. I took care of the kids in the house and all the things. We started an event together, and until that point, I hadn\u2019t done anything. Once our kids got a little bit older, I hadn\u2019t done anything outside the home to contribute financially.<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:42]\u00a0And then once we did that, it felt like we\u2019d opened up a stop gap where then my contribution for everything I was doing before that time wasn\u2019t as valuable because now I had shown that I could actually take care of the home and the kids and do something that earned money.<\/p>\n<p>[00:44:58]\u00a0And so I felt like after we did that\u2013 that was in 2011. But then there was an expectation that I would always do something that would help to earn more money as well, and I didn\u2019t like that either. I felt like I didn\u2019t sign up for that. I signed up to be a mom and take care of my kids until they were grown. So I think there was just a lot of role changing and confusion and not talking a lot about it directly.<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:26]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Feels like a full-blown midlife crisis from where I stand.<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:32]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me. Why?<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:33]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Last winter, I remember having a striking thought that I\u2019ve peaked. And then you start looking at examples of individuals in your life that are a little long in the tooth. And then imagining that that\u2019s\u2013 and they\u2019re never positive examples. They\u2019re always negative examples.<\/p>\n<p>[00:45:54]\u00a0And I won\u2019t bring up any names, but you look at those people, and we actually use those individuals as ammunition against each other. We\u2019re going to end up just like such and such. Sandra and I will lob those bills back and forth. I don\u2019t want to end up like so and so.<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:11]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Wow.<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:13]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0And so it\u2019s pretty heavy, and it\u2019s pretty deep, and it only adds to the stress and the pressure of the monthly budgeting conversations. I think the darkest thought is you just wasted all that potential and all of those dreams that you had when you were a kid you never fulfilled on turn into nightmares, and you\u2019re wallowing, and it\u2019s all just this imagination creeping in.<\/p>\n<p>[00:46:42]\u00a0And then I\u2019m ashamed to say it\u2019s very real. In my mind, when I\u2019m in that space\u2013 yeah, I was there this last winter. I\u2019ve peaked. I\u2019ve got no more ambition. I\u2019ve got no more energy. I\u2019ve gone through all this entrepreneurial stuff. It\u2019s time to just settle down.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:01]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0There\u2019s a lot to notice from that last exchange. Did you catch the clues? Even during 60, 000-dollar months, Sandra was unhappy. Now that she\u2019s working, she feels resentful. She expects him to bring in an income. Brad calls their situation a full-blown midlife crisis. And what\u2019s perhaps most disturbing is that they\u2019re sniping and jabbing at each other using other couples as negative examples.\u00a0Lots of clues here, mostly negative ones.<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:34]\u00a0We\u2019ll be back after this.<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:37]\u00a0Now, back to the show.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0And so that brings us to today. Correct? You\u2019re renting. You\u2019ve got some cash in the bank because of the house sale. And would you say that that house sale represents the bulk of your net worth?<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:50]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:47:51]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. But there\u2019s a couple of other details that I would add to this web that we\u2019re weaving. The house sale was a difficult decision to come to. We thought that that was always the plan B. And these words coming out of my mouth are interesting to hear, but we\u2019ve invested the majority of the money from the house to an oil operation on a project that I had been watching for the last several years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What\u2019s an oil operation? What is that?<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:28]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s a fracking unit out in the middle of a desert that\u2019s pulling oil out of the ground. And the entity that is managing the project was looking for investors. Generally speaking, it\u2019s a $200 million project. I\u2019ve got some buddies that are playing a much bigger game than I am, but I had an opportunity to go in with them.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:50]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much did you invest?<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:51]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0All of it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:52]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0A million.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Is this a joke?<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:55]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0No.<\/p>\n<p>[00:48:58]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You invested one million, which is basically almost all of the investment money into one fracking operation.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:08]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Several different fracking operations. I\u2019m watching Sandra\u2019s face there as we\u2019re coming to an unbiased third party to hear our story.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, what do you think I\u2019m going to say?<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:23]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0I haven\u2019t listened to all of your podcasts, but let buckle in. I\u2019m ready for it.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:29]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Before we go on, let me just get this one thing out, which I\u2019ve been wanting to ask you about. So you have a part-time job right now.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:34]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:35]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Which is what?<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:38]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Teacher.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:39]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you teach?<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:40]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Personal finance.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:42]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:43]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019ve been playing the traditional game since day one. So we graduated from college back in early 2000. And at that point, one of the reasons why we were managing our budget as low as we could, is so that we could max out our 401K\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:57]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right.<\/p>\n<p>[00:49:58]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So we could max out our IRAs. And that was 25 years ago. And so back in those days, we were living under the same documentation that\u2019s found on the textbooks, 8% compound interest. Einstein, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. And this is the way to do it. We don\u2019t have much to show for those initial investments.<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:18]\u00a0So in 2000, Sandra and Brad were making decisions for future Sandra and Brad, thinking that those investments were going to grow significantly in a straight line overtime. And at this point, after all of the eating ramen and not having telephones and all these other things that we were doing so that we could invest while we were young, those accounts suck right now. They didn\u2019t pan out like the textbook said.<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:47]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Hold on. Hold on, hold on. Before we go on. Tell me what you mean by that. These accounts suck right now. What does that mean?<\/p>\n<p>[00:50:54]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0We went back and did some analysis, and they\u2019ve averaged about a 3% rate of return year over year for the last 25 years. So we thought that we could make those investment\u2013 and they were all diversified, which we fired a financial advisor, guiding us along the way.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:13]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How long was your advisor with you charging you\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:15]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a024 years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:15]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a01%. It\u2019s so nice of them. It\u2019s so nominal. Anyway, so they charged you. And then what did they put you in? That\u2019s what I want to know. Because 3% per year is horrible.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:24]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Right? Horrible.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:26]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0I bet you they didn\u2019t put you in growth stuff. They go, we\u2019re going to make sure your money\u2019s safe. We\u2019re going to keep you safe because we\u2019re not\u2013 our aim is not to beat the market. It\u2019s simply to provide a nice return for safety and security, some\u00a0bullshit\u00a0like that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:37]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0And it gets complicated. They use language along the lines of, when we were first starting, you\u2019re young, we\u2019re going to put you in growth caps and international funds, and we\u2019ve got this allocation. And they come in to give us a yearly review. And I\u2019m relatively educated. I\u2019ve got an MBA, but you can\u2019t dazzle with brilliance, baffling with\u00a0bullshit.<\/p>\n<p>[00:51:58]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, you\u2019re right. You can\u2019t make sense of it. If it\u2019s good, they tell you that. If it\u2019s bad, they razzle dazzle you. I get it. And I\u2019m angry on behalf of you. I am not sure that I agree with your conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:18]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0And I get that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:20]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0And I don\u2019t agree either with his conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:25]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What is your perspective?<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:26]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019d like to max out every Roth 401K, IRA. If I could open a Roth for my kids, I would. So I\u2019d like to have all of that going so that we are diversified.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:38]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. And when you don\u2019t, the fact that you\u2019re not doing that, how does that make you feel?<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:44]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0Like we\u2019re going to end up just like my parents, on our reverse mortgage, because they couldn\u2019t afford to buy a house and stressed about money every single month with no investment, savings, no retirement.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:55]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0It seems like that gives you a lot of fear.<\/p>\n<p>[00:52:58]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0It does because they tried so hard, if that makes sense. And they tried so hard, and they\u2019re in not a great spot. And I worry that we\u2019re going to end up needing to take care of them. And I love them, and I will if we need to, but I tease with Brad about we\u2019re going to need to build a compound, and on one side, build an apartment for your parents, and on one side, build an apartment for my parents. His parents are probably going to be fine financially, but mine will definitely need help. So I worry about that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:27]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:27]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Listen, this is a bold move, and I am super clear that it\u2019s a bold move, and I\u2019m so grateful that\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:37]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Is that a word that you chose? Bold.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:40]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:40]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0What\u2019s another word for bold? Do I need to open up the Thesaurus?<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:44]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ll go down to [Inaudible]. Bold.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:46]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Bold.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:47]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019m a bold gambler. But listen, I feel like the system is rigged, right?<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:54]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Against you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:53:55]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. With all the IRAs, and 401K\u2019s, and mutual funds and money advisors.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:01]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0No, no, no, not that. The oil game is rigged against you.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:04]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0No, see, I don\u2019t see it that\u2013 I see it like when the deck is stacked against you and every now and again, you get a perfect hand, and you go big with it. And that\u2019s where I\u2019m at. And see you grimace, and I\u2019m sure that people are listening are thinking that I\u2019m absolutely out of mind. I\u2019ll tell you, when we do get to a full payoff with those dividends, it\u2019ll be a huge sigh of relief.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:31]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0This is so messed up. They start investing early in their marriage, only to sign with an unscrupulous salesman who calls himself a financial advisor, bleeds them dry of their money via fees and horrible funds, then they finally catch on, 20 years later, only to make the completely wrong conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>[00:54:51]\u00a0Brad\u2019s conclusion is all traditional investing routes suck, and I need to put our entire family life savings to good use into an oil well. Ramit\u2019s conclusion is we probably should have read a single book about personal finance, not paid huge fees. And when we were making $80,000 a month for years, we probably should have invested a huge amount of that money into low cost index funds, which would have set us up for the rest of our lives.<\/p>\n<p>[00:55:23]\u00a0Of course, one of the primary reasons for Brad\u2019s extremely risky approach with money is that once people feel behind, once people feel like they have to catch up or even that it\u2019s too late, they start to make increasingly frantic, risky decisions,\u00a0which, of course, is a cycle. Just like you would imagine a gambler In Vegas, that leads to simply more poor outcomes. Again, remember, Brad teaches personal finance.<\/p>\n<p>[Interview]<\/p>\n<p>[00:55:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So this is a single investment that pays out. It pays you some monthly dividend. Correct?<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:03]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So there\u2019s two projects. Yes, it pays dividends.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:06]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. And how long has this been going on for?<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:09]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So we made the first investment of May, \u201922 right after the house sold. And we made the second investment of January of 2023.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:22]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0All right, so you invested in two tranches. And how much are you getting paid? From a million dollars, how much are you getting paid out per month?<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:29]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So the first project has been paying since January. And so we\u2019re pretty close to the end of the year where like 40% of the initial investment has been paid back.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:42]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So you put in 500k.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:44]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, just to do easy math. So we put 500k. So far it\u2019s paid back like\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:49]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0200k.<\/p>\n<p>[00:56:50]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0200k. We\u2019ve got another couple of months. They\u2019re coming through. The second project kicks in. Actually, the first dividend should be coming here in this next week.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0How much?<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:02]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0The first is I took a flight out to the oil field then it was spectacular and got to touch the dirt. And I have some oil from the project. The first one is going to be about a percent and a half, but then when we start getting into December, January, it should start getting about 3.8 to 6% per month.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:21]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0For how long?<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:23]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Till the oil dries up.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:26]\u00a0<strong>Sandra:<\/strong>\u00a0The percentage changes.<\/p>\n<p>[00:57:28]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. So there\u2019s two variables. The percentage changes after they have a 100% payback. Then the investor payback goes from 100% of net income down to 70% net income. The traditional trajectory for the oil projects in this particular area, they peak at year three or year four. And then it\u2019s a relatively steep decline. But there will be oil that comes out of these projects for the next 20, 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:00]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0So I know you can\u2019t predict it because it\u2019s one oil operation. It\u2019s not hundreds that you can average out. But what percentage annual return can you expect, ballpark?<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:15]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So for the first year, it\u2019ll be pretty close to 50%. There\u2019s a lot of variables in play, but I would anticipate, after we peak and we start going down into years 6, 7, 8, or 9, maybe 15 to 20% per month. The other nice thing about the project is it\u2013<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:33]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Per month?<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:33]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0Sorry, sorry, I miss poke. Per year.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:35]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:37]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a015, 20% per year. The other super nice part of this oil operation is that it\u2019s domestic based, and so we get a 70 cents per dollar tax deduction. So for every dollar that we invest in the project, we get a 70% tax opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>[00:58:56]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0You have a huge deduction. All right, fine. What can go wrong with this?<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:02]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0The price of oil can drop below, break even, which is sitting about 30% or $30 per barrel. They can miss the oil. Both projects are currently on the oil. There\u2019s regulation issues that could come up with EPA. There\u2019s some presidential risk. But I\u2019d say where we\u2019re at now is about as bad as it\u2019s going to be. So there are significant risks, and I\u2019m crystal clear on that.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:30]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. All right. Well, listen, so far, your answers are good. I\u2019m not sure if I agree with your conclusion, but I like that you have your numbers. You know the projections. You know the risks. All right.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:44]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0So for the short term, I do believe that there\u2019s opportunities that can pay out, and I believe that I found one.<\/p>\n<p>[00:59:50]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Can I ask you a question? I understand why you chose to go into a highly risky investment. You looked at your investing for the last 25 years and said, this is not good. The account\u2019s horrible. We found out we were getting charged 1% after 24 years. Even when we look at the returns, it was horrible. I want no part of this long-term investing stuff.<\/p>\n<p>[01:00:20]\u00a0And every month, I\u2019m getting these text messages and conversations from my wife that I don\u2019t want to have a part of anymore. So I\u2019m going to take this money from selling our house, and I\u2019m going to put it in something that\u2019s going to pay off big. I\u2019ve done the risk evaluation, etc. And look, it\u2019s paying me 20 to $60,000 a month right now. Here. Haven\u2019t I earned some peace? Look at what I\u2019ve delivered to our family. Is that accurate?<\/p>\n<p>[01:00:53]\u00a0<strong>Brad:<\/strong>\u00a0More than 100% perfect. This was a project that I\u2019ve been watching for two years. I had researched inside and out, and I feel like we\u2019ve got the perfect hand with it. In the way that it\u2019s structured, we get the tax opportunity, and we\u2019re seeing a 50% return per year on the first project that we\u2019re into. The second one is tapping into the same oil reserves. And I know that it\u2019s getting tedious and into the details, but it does feel like this is a nice chance to crush it and to get out of that rat race where we\u2019ve been stuck in the last 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>[Narration]<\/p>\n<p>[01:01:37]\u00a0<strong>Ramit:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, based on what Brad just told you, do you think this is a good idea? If you\u2019re watching on YouTube, just leave your comment below. And next week, we\u2019ll pick up on our conversation with even more numbers, which, I promise, will surprise you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sandra is 46. Brad is 48. They have four children and are living a high lifestyle as a result of two generational income explosions tied to Brad\u2019s work in the home lending industry. That variance, though, seeded issues in their money psychology\u2014leading to risky investments and trust issues. Links mentioned in this episode: \u201cHe put [&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-118931","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\/118931","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=118931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}