{"id":1933,"date":"2025-07-21T01:22:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T01:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/2025\/07\/21\/episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T01:22:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T01:22:02","slug":"episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/2025\/07\/21\/episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 217. \u201cAre we broke\u2026or just bad with money? (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u201cAre we broke\u2026or just bad with money? (Part 1)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sTGKsihfZzo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/3RMbNMMekwJYnwBO8xSoai?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Dominique (33) and Chris (34) have been together for six years, engaged for two, and share a two-year-old son. While Dominique manages parenting, full-time work, and their finances, Chris shuts down when money comes up\u2014and has no plan for what\u2019s next. With rising childcare costs, growing debt, and a second home draining up to $2,000\/month, their finances are on the brink. Dominique has paused their wedding plans\u2014and admits she\u2019s considering co-parenting alone. Can Ramit help them build a future together before it\u2019s too late?<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_82_2 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Turinys:<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/2025\/07\/21\/episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1\/#In_this_episode_we_uncover\" >In this episode we uncover:<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/2025\/07\/21\/episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1\/#Chapters\" >Chapters:<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/2025\/07\/21\/episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1\/#This_episode_is_brought_to_you_by\" >This episode is brought to you by:<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/2025\/07\/21\/episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1\/#Links_mentioned_in_this_episode\" >Links mentioned in this episode\u00a0<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/2025\/07\/21\/episode-217-are-we-brokeor-just-bad-with-money-part-1\/#Transcript\" >Transcript\u00a0<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"In_this_episode_we_uncover\"><\/span><b>In this episode we uncover:<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">The emotional burden Dominique carries as the default parent, planner, and financial lead<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">How Chris\u2019s we\u2019ll-figure-it-out mindset undermines Dominique\u2019s trust and long-term planning<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">The real reason their wedding is on pause\u2014and why Dominique\u2019s preparing for life on her own<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Chris\u2019s internal conflict: overwhelmed by adulthood, uncertain how to change<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">How avoiding money conversations became the deepest fracture in their relationship<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">What happens when one partner is growing\u2014and the other is standing still<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Ramit\u2019s challenge to both: take action now, or risk losing everything<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Chapters\"><\/span><b>Chapters:<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:00:00) \u201cAt this rate, we\u2019ll be co-parenting next year\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:06:52) Can I actually afford a new vehicle?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:20:46) Ramit breaks down their numbers<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:30:43) \u201cWe make $180K\u2014but we still feel broke\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:46:45) Uncovering their REAL spending habits<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:55:59) The money messages they\u2019re passing on without realizing it<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(01:18:29) \u201cWe\u2019ll figure it out\u201d\u2014reacting vs. being proactive<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(01:23:26) What we\u2019ll uncover next week<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"This_episode_is_brought_to_you_by\"><\/span><b>This episode is brought to you by:<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">OpenPhone | Get 20% off your first 6 months at <\/span><strong>https:\/\/openphone.com\/ramit.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Notion | Try Notion for free at <\/span><strong>https:\/\/notion.com\/ramit<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\"> and experience the powerful, easy-to-use Notion AI today.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Trust &amp; Will | Protect what matters most in minutes at <\/span><strong>https:\/\/trustandwill.com\/ramit<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\"> and get 10% off plus free shipping.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Rocket Money | Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way at <\/span><strong>https:\/\/rocketmoney.com\/ramit.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">LMNT | Right now, LMNT is offering 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. Get yours at <\/span><strong>https:\/\/drinklmnt.com\/RAMIT.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Links_mentioned_in_this_episode\"><\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"none\">Links mentioned in this episode<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;134245418&quot;:true,&quot;134245529&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:450,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:768}\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">If you&#8217;ve been waiting for &#8222;the right time&#8221; to start your business, join me on Monday, July 21, at 8pm ET \/ 5pm PT to learn how to start a business in just one hour. Reserve your seat at <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">iwt.com\/earnmore<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Should you buy or rent? Get my 3-step guide to buying a house at <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">iwt.com\/house<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Transcript\"><\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"none\">Transcript<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;134245418&quot;:true,&quot;134245529&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559685&quot;:2010,&quot;335559737&quot;:2010,&quot;335559738&quot;:375,&quot;335559739&quot;:375,&quot;335559740&quot;:768}\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Download the full transcript PDF<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;335559685&quot;:2010,&quot;335559737&quot;:2010,&quot;335559738&quot;:150,&quot;335559739&quot;:150}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like we&#8217;re almost one really big\u00a0(Bleep)-up full way from just losing everything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How much money do you have in your checking account right now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0At the moment, in my checking account, I have $64 and 18 cents.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m depleting my savings, trying to pay for everything. I felt like I was doing it by myself, just trying to handle everything, all the bills. And at that point, I&#8217;m like, &#8222;I could just do this by myself.&#8221;\u00a0Just seeing it laid out on just like, we have no money.\u00a0We&#8217;re screwed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Tomorrow&#8217;s not promised, so live in the moment, have fun while you got it. I feel like if you have it, do what you want with it, and if you look at it the right way, things will eventually work out for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:42)\u00a0Just how uneducated we really are about money and how much we are just, I don&#8217;t want to say wasting, but wasting money in a sense on things that you don&#8217;t really see until you put it on paper or put it right in front of your face and you&#8217;re like, &#8222;Holy\u00a0(Bleep).&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:01:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Today I&#8217;m speaking with Dominique and Chris. They&#8217;re 33 and 34,\u00a0engaged, and they have a 2-year-old son. Here&#8217;s what Dominique wrote in her application, and I want you to really listen closely.\u00a0She said, &#8222;Talking about money seems to end in an argument. Part of me feels like if we had more money, we would have more love for each other.\u00a0At this rate,\u00a0I feel like we&#8217;ll be co-parenting in the next year or so, and I always feel like we can lose everything at any moment.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:01:33)\u00a0This is brutally honest. Do you hear what she&#8217;s saying? She&#8217;s saying she basically sees this relationship ending in about a year. This is one of the reasons I want to talk to them right now.\u00a0So I just opened up their conscious spending plan. It shows us their four key numbers, their fixed costs, savings, investments, and guilt-free spending. If you\u00a0want to\u00a0follow along or\u00a0create your own CSP, you can go to iwt.com\/csp.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:01)\u00a0Their total assets come in just over a million bucks, which is very impressive for their age.\u00a0Their investments though are only 24,562. Should probably be higher.\u00a0Savings are at $13,198. Their debt is at $615,000, which puts their net worth at $425,000. Now,\u00a0they earn roughly 180k\u00a0a year combined, which is a very strong income, but their fixed costs eat up 69% of it, which is too high. Investments and savings are 13 and 18%.\u00a0But the real red flag here is that their guilt-free spending is listed at 0%. I don&#8217;t believe that number. So let me find out what&#8217;s going on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So who filled out the application to speak to me?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0She did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Dominique, do you remember where you were, and can you walk me through what was going through your mind at that time?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I was in a bad place, straight up. I think that we had been arguing a lot. I don&#8217;t remember specific details. I think we just couldn&#8217;t catch a break. The baby was up every single night. It was just really overwhelming. Maybe our air conditioning bill was super high. I don&#8217;t even know. It was a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I was off work a little.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s right. He was off work. So it was me handling it. I really felt alone in handling it. And I had saw that application roll through, and I was in my bed. Chris was knocked out, snoring next to me, and I&#8217;m filling this out just like, &#8222;Oh my God.&#8221; And I just laid everything out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm. Chris, what was your reaction?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m still in a shock, but I&#8217;m all for it. I&#8217;m ready to dig deep into it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Dominique, since you filled out the application, can you tell me, what is going on here?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that we don&#8217;t know what we&#8217;re doing, ever.\u00a0When we&#8217;re talking about finances, I don&#8217;t know everything. I don&#8217;t know how to prepare for them. It&#8217;s overwhelming.\u00a0I think we wing it a lot.\u00a0I feel like we&#8217;re almost one really big\u00a0(Bleep)-up full way from just losing everything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We have so much that is going out money-wise, and I see nothing coming back, or when it comes back, it&#8217;s gone immediately. And then I&#8217;m like, &#8222;What are we doing? We have nothing to show for it.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can you describe the primary problem in one or two sentences?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think we have a very expensive house that we&#8217;re paying for in Arizona.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. That&#8217;s the problem, the house?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s not a huge problem, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What&#8217;s the primary problem?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Our house is expensive. Yeah. But I don&#8217;t think we should get rid of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that the problem is we don&#8217;t know what the other has in a sense, and we don&#8217;t really communicate about it. And I think the problem is that we need to, in a sense, be more conscious of each other&#8217;s finances and help each other.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hmm. Do you both think that you understand the problem?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-mm. I think we have so many problems, we don&#8217;t ever talk about them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Was notable when I asked what&#8217;s going on, that both of you gave different problems, and then both of you shifted into what you need to do, like solutions. It&#8217;s like me going to get my car fixed and there&#8217;s a pinging noise and I walk in and I go, &#8222;Well, the seat is loose and the glove compartment doesn&#8217;t close, and also there&#8217;s a pinging, but what I really need to do is I need to change the type of gas I use.&#8221; It&#8217;s what&#8217;s going on, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What would be a different approach if you had a problem in your car and you took it to the car repair place? What would you do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0For me, if I have a problem in the car, I&#8217;m going to take it to the mechanic. I&#8217;m going to just tell him, fix it. I don&#8217;t care how much it is. Just fix it for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Chris?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If you don&#8217;t really know much about it, you ask questions of how to&#8211; maybe someone else can figure out the problem or help with the solution to the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. That&#8217;s why we&#8217;re here. We&#8217;re going to figure out what&#8217;s going on and then come up with some solutions. Dominique, in your application you wrote, &#8222;I need us to be on the same page before we can move forward and be the best parents to our 2-year-old son. At this rate, I feel like we will be co-parenting in the next year or so.&#8221;\u00a0Now,\u00a0those are pretty striking words. What do you mean by in a year or so,\u00a0I feel like we will be co-parenting?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I just felt like we could not communicate about anything. Chris mentioned that he was off of work for a while, so that was pretty tough on us. I&#8217;m depleting my savings, trying to pay for everything. I needed him to figure out what his next move was going to be as far as work goes. If you don&#8217;t have work for X amount of days, figure it out quick because at that point, I felt like I was doing it by myself, just trying to handle everything, all the bills. And at that point I&#8217;m like, &#8222;I could just do this by myself.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can you walk me through a time where the two of you were not on the same financial page?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Recently, or not even recently. I don&#8217;t even know when it was, but we were arguing because he wanted to buy another car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm. Okay. Let&#8217;s start there. So where were you when this conversation happened?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0This conversation has been happening for a while. Maybe a month or two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And what was the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Because I drive a car, and we only have two vehicles at the moment. We have our 4Runner that we have, and I drive a little car on the way to work and stuff like that. And I just thought that, for one, I want to get another vehicle to help take my stuff for work because I do construction and sometimes I need to get longer material that I can fit inside of a car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:54)\u00a0And as well as, since we do have the baby and the car is always filled up with all my tools and stuff at work, if there were to be in any type of emergency or any type of situation and she&#8217;s gone with the car and I have the baby or vice versa, I just always want to have some way to have transportation for both of us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Can we recreate that conversation? Where were you? Paint the picture for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The last time when this all happened, I think we were on our way to Target.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Who was driving?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I believe I was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. All right. So Chris, we&#8217;re in the car. I&#8217;m just in the backseat listening like a creep, like this. All right. So you two have the conversation as if you&#8217;re in the car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. I think that we should look into getting another vehicle because we need to have something in case something happens with Troy, something happens with the other car and I&#8217;m out of a car and we only have one car, and I can&#8217;t get to work. So I was thinking about looking into a bank and seeing how much a loan would be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What bank did you look at, and what was the APR, and how are you going to pay for this? Is there anything that you could pay down before we have another bill?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, I didn&#8217;t look all into that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Then I don&#8217;t really want to have the conversation if you don&#8217;t have the information.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How did it end?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I shut down because I didn&#8217;t have all the information, and I know she&#8217;s very like, &#8222;Give me this information. Have this, have this all lined up and stuff like that.&#8221; In a sense, I was just mentioning it because it was a thought that I had and just wanted to look into it to be able to find more information. But she took it as if like, I&#8217;m going to go tomorrow and go buy this car right off the lot for a $10,000 loan and things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Chris, when you brought up the idea of getting another car and Dominique responded in the way that she did, what did it feel like to you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I just felt like what I was saying doesn&#8217;t matter. I felt attacked, to where what are you saying is for like, you don&#8217;t have all this information, so what are you even bringing it to me?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And then I want to ask the same question of you, Dominique. What did it feel like when Chris brought up the idea of getting another car?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0There are so many other things that are going on that adding a card to the list, it&#8217;s just too much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I noticed that when I ask you how did it feel, I get a lot of words that are not feelings, and I actually am very compassionate about that. Because I wasn&#8217;t raised talking about my feelings. So I have a tool that a therapist suggested to me. This is the wheel of emotions. I&#8217;d love for you to just take a second and look at it and see two or three feelings that come to mind.\u00a0Can you see that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Chris, I&#8217;m\u00a0going to\u00a0ask you first, and then I&#8217;m\u00a0going to\u00a0come to you, Dominique. Chris, what did you feel now reflecting on that, in that conversation?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know, misunderstood. It just felt like what I was saying was just uncared for in a sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Dominique, how about for you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0In that conversation, overwhelmed and annoyed. And I want to point out too that I just want Chris to know that his feelings are valid and I could understand how you feel unheard in that conversation. 100%.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You ever talk about how you feel?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Sometimes we talk about how we feel, especially when we get into really uncomfortable situations. We might get real quiet, and it might take a second for us to get to that, but I think after we give ourselves a second, we do come back and talk about how we feel in the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Now that you recreated that conversation for me, which was really helpful, what did you notice about that conversation with a little distance and perspective?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That I could be nicer. I could hear him out, and I don&#8217;t do that a lot. So from that conversation, I understand that I definitely could have heard you better.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I just could have had more information, but I didn&#8217;t have all that information. So when I was just saying something about it, I didn&#8217;t expect it to get where it ended up getting to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How do you think other couples have conversations like this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t really want to compare myself to anybody, but I feel like people have probably better communication. I want Chris to come to me directly and confidently, and that makes me feel better about going into a conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Chris, how do you think other couples have conversations like these?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe the same as we do. It really all depends on the people, the context, the way things are said or brought up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Is everyone evading my question right now? What&#8217;s happening? Dominique&#8217;s answer to that question was what she wants Chris to do. And Chris&#8217;s answer is, it all depends on the cosmos and the oceans. The question is simple. How do you think other couples have conversations like these?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Better than us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Like what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. That&#8217;s a honest answer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. They are like, hey, this is what we want. I feel like people just have a better way. Maybe they start arguing. Maybe it&#8217;s the worst way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, interesting. Who says, I don&#8217;t know in a conversation? Do either of you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We both say I don&#8217;t know a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Really?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, we say it tons.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We always say I don&#8217;t know I think to avoid everything that we know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Do you have friends who you talk about money with?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Dominique says, yes. Chris, you said no?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t talk to really many people at all about money or my own money or things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How about family?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Here and there, I guess, but not really.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Chris says not really. Dominique nodded her head like yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. So not to stick on this point, but Dominique, you talk to friends. You talk to family about money. How would they have a conversation like this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The main person that I go to is my dad about money. But he just gives me advice. It is not really a question. I&#8217;m just listening at that point. When I talk to my friends about it, we just communicate way better than Chris and I.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. If you were to buy another car, how would that affect your finances?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s just going to add more money to our, I guess, overall debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can you afford it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If I&#8217;m working all the time and I have consistent work, then I believe we could afford it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris, how do you know if you could afford something?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If I have the money to do it, I feel like I can afford it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Meaning if you have the money where? In your checking account?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. If I&#8217;m making enough money and we&#8217;re putting enough away, I feel like we could afford it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. A question about affordability, is that about feelings, or is that about numbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Numbers, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, so where are the numbers in your answer?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0They weren&#8217;t there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Well, the good news is that almost nobody in America knows how to answer the question, can you afford that? They give me these real funny answers like, if it&#8217;s on your feet or your back, then you can afford it. Because whatever&#8217;s between your feet and the Lord, whatever that phrase is, you can afford it. I go, &#8222;Hmm, that was invented by a mattress salesman and a shoe salesman. That&#8217;s not affordability. Affordability has a number.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0But we&#8217;ll get there. Dominique, same question to you now. How would another vehicle affect your personal finances?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think immensely. I already think that we&#8217;re cutting it close. So an extra 200, 300 for a vehicle is not working in what I see our finance is doing right now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. How much money do you have in your checking account right now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0At the moment, in my checking account, I have $64 and 18 cents.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Well, we went grocery shopping this morning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Is that your joint checking account?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, we don&#8217;t have \u200ajoint checking account.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We don&#8217;t have a joint checking account.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. You have separate accounts. So Chris, you have $64 in your checking account. And Dominique, how much do you have in your checking account?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0339.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0$339. Okay. All right. So can you afford another car? Dominique says no. Chris?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are you just saying that because you think I want to hear it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No. At the moment, no, I don&#8217;t think we can afford it. I really don&#8217;t.(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The way Chris approaches purchasing a car is a huge clue. Did you catch it? He started out saying they could afford another car, but that confidence was not based on numbers.\u00a0It was just a feeling. And he even said,\u00a0&#8222;If I have money coming in, I feel like I can afford it.&#8221;\u00a0That&#8217;s it. That was the extent of his logic. Then I asked one question, how much is in your checking account? Two minutes later, his answer changed from, yes, we can,\u00a0to, no, we can&#8217;t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:40)\u00a0This happens all the time. Most people treat affordability like a vibe.\u00a0It&#8217;s like, oh, I&#8217;m at a restaurant. Should I order the burger or the fettuccine Alfredo? No. That is not how you make affordability decisions. In fact, cars are one of the biggest financial decisions that people get wrong,\u00a0and they get it wrong for years. You know how I always talk about running the numbers on a house?\u00a0You\u00a0got to\u00a0do the same for a car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:06)\u00a0The real key here is that your feelings matter, but you also\u00a0got to\u00a0use some math when you make major financial decisions. How much can you afford?\u00a0If you hear me saying that in your head, your answer better have a number,\u00a0because\u00a0that is how you answer that question.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Now, you mentioned you have a son. How old is your son?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Two years old. All right. And are the two of you married?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-mm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Not married, but do you live together?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Live together. You have a 2-year-old son, and you, it sounds like, have not combined finances. Is that accurate?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We have an account for bills that are combined.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, you have a joint account where you both put money in. All right. And do you both have individual money as well?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, cool. All right. Just so I know, any plans to get married?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0He knows when we&#8217;ll get married.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The stipulation is she wants to get married in Italy because that&#8217;s I proposed to her. But at the moment we are&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I just don&#8217;t see that we need to do it anytime soon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You don&#8217;t need to. Chris, what about you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s always been something I want to do, and I&#8217;ve never really found somebody and then I found her, and yeah, I would love to be married.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Got it. That&#8217;s all I need to know. Look, I&#8217;m not judging. Married, not married, doesn&#8217;t matter to me. I just know the situation so I can understand what&#8217;s going on.\u00a0Now, you both created your conscious spending plan using my CSP template. What was that like?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think it was eye-opening. I didn&#8217;t realize, first of all, subscriptions.\u00a0Didn&#8217;t realize that.\u00a0And then just seeing it laid out on just like, we have no money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;re screwed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, that was your reaction after seeing the numbers, we&#8217;re screwed?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And what was it like for you, Chris?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It was nerve wracking, just being able to put all the numbers on the table and see how far behind we are or we aren&#8217;t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Did you have any conversations about the numbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Not really.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. You just looked at them and then Dominique said, &#8222;I&#8217;m screwed.&#8221; And that was it? Like, goodnight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Honestly, no. I think it was like we just looked at\u00a0them, we&#8217;re like,\u00a0&#8222;Okay, here&#8217;s our starting point.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Ooh, I like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We see it now. That was a eye-opener. And yeah, I said other choice words, but yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What words?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;re\u00a0(Bleep).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris, when you heard Dominique say that, what was your reaction?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I said, &#8222;This is why we&#8217;re doing this, and hopefully we can get out better on the other side after we go through this whole process.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right, cool. Let&#8217;s take a look at the numbers. So just so we know, you are both in your early 30s. And Dominique, why don&#8217;t you read off the word in bold and then the number in full next to it for the entire box?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. So assets,\u00a0we have\u00a01,003,100. We have investments,\u00a0$5,526.\u00a0Savings, 13,198,\u00a0and debt is 615,339.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Total\u00a0net\u00a0worth?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Is $425,485.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you think about those numbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I just see a huge debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You just see debt?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You don&#8217;t see the total net worth number?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s hard for me to see that because I feel like if we miss a payment or something goes wrong, we can lose that quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You hate debt? Like you hate it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t want to say that I hate it. It scares me. Debt scares me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Debt scares you. Okay. If you had a choice of paying off debt or investing it, what would you prefer to do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would prefer to invest, but I just don&#8217;t know how. So now I&#8217;m just paying off debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Got you. All right. And what about you, Chris? What do you think about those numbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0They&#8217;re what I thought in a sense of like the debt, because we do have two houses, but I think that the numbers could be better. I think that they&#8217;re okay, but I think that we definitely could be better.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Like what? What would be better?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Just a higher net worth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I want bigger savings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Can I ask a little bit about what these numbers are? So the assets, the 1 million bucks, what are those assets?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Both houses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Two houses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How many cars?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We have a Sica, which I went high on that one and said it was worth 5,000 because it&#8217;s my baby. But the 4Rrunner is 30 or 40. Arizona House is about 400,000. The California house is about 600.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. So that&#8217;s it, those four things? Two houses, two cars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Great. And then what&#8217;s the debt?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Both houses, the car. I think I put my school loans in there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How much are your student loans?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Between 10 and 14. I forget.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And then also our credit. I have 7,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And I think mine was eight or something.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right.\u00a0Can you tell me about these two houses?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You own one and you rent another one out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So our California house is ours. We use the money from our family home to pay off most of the mortgage. So we only owe about 200 on this one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The Arizona house, I feel like we definitely purchased at the wrong time, and we have people renting that house out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Covering\u00a0the mortgage?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, not fully.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How much are you losing? Every single month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Anywhere from 800 to 900.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. 900 bucks a month. And what about maintenance?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And maintenance,\u00a0anything comes up, we pay for it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So in my estimation, without looking at exact property or anything like that, if it were me calculating it, I would probably assume,\u00a0instead of 900 a month, I&#8217;m losing more like 1,600 a month, maybe even&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0More.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0More. I&#8217;m always conservative. I would probably just make it 2,000 a month just to be super safe.\u00a0So you&#8217;re down 2,000 a month. Okay. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s good or bad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We can figure it out.\u00a0But you&#8217;re losing every month on that. Okay, fine. In the California house, do you own it in full or you still have a mortgage on it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, we still have the mortgage on it, so 200 on this one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. And then how did you get the Arizona house?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We got it in 2022. Basically the market was really high, so it was either rent and put our money towards nothing or buy in a sense,\u00a0is what we thought.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wait. What?\u00a0What\u00a0do you mean rent and put your money towards?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So when we were in Arizona, they were\u00a0going to\u00a0raise our rent so high in\u00a0the apartment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, I didn&#8217;t\u00a0want to\u00a0do\u00a0but we&#8217;re going to do it.\u00a0All right.\u00a0Let&#8217;s do the numbers. Hold on. I need to get my game face on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. I&#8217;m ready. How much was your rent before they tried to raise it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When we first moved out there, it was 13,\u00a0and then they raised it to about 18-something, and then they wanted to raise it again to about 24 or 2,500,\u00a023 or something like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, fine. So you&#8217;re paying 1,800 and they\u00a0want to\u00a0raise it to, let&#8217;s say,\u00a02,400. Okay. Fine. And how much is your mortgage plus HOA, plus maintenance,\u00a0all of it included?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We haven&#8217;t had much maintenance to have to take care of, but our mortgage and HOA is about 26, 2,700.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. So the thing you were so afraid of, you&#8217;re actually paying more than that every single month, and you haven&#8217;t even included maintenance in, which is probably another 500 to\u00a0$1,000 a month. Do you guys see how this sounds?\u00a0I just have to disabuse us all of this idea that if we rent, we&#8217;re throwing money away.\u00a0And sometimes even rent increases.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:25:19)\u00a0Americans (Bleep) hate the idea of some landlord raising rent on them. So they will literally cut their own nose off to spite their face. They&#8217;ll be like\u00a0&#8222;You&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0raise my rent to 2,400?\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0you.\u00a0I&#8217;ll pay 27.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:25:36)\u00a0And they don&#8217;t understand,\u00a0because\u00a0they just say equity. But if you all looked at the amortization table, you basically have no equity. You have very little equity in the last few years. And right now, you&#8217;re lucky you haven&#8217;t had maintenance, but once your air conditioning breaks in Arizona, that (Bleep) is thousands of bucks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:25:52)\u00a0So this idea, which is so strong in America,\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0these landlords raising our rent. Remember that old story of a scorpion going on a turtle&#8217;s back or something, and the scorpion stings the, whatever the (Bleep) that animal was. And the animal goes,\u00a0&#8222;Why&#8217;d you sting me?&#8221;\u00a0And the scorpion goes,\u00a0&#8222;I&#8217;m a scorpion.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:09)\u00a0That&#8217;s what landlords do. They literally raise or drop the rent based on the market.\u00a0That&#8217;s what they are. So I&#8217;m not getting mad at you. This is not directed to you. This is directed towards the millions of people listening to this who think rent is throwing money away.\u00a0It&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s simply a financial and lifestyle decision.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I find it fascinating how little curiosity we bring to major life decisions. People will spend hours picking the perfect kid&#8217;s toy or researching the perfect frying pan. But when it comes to a 400,000-dollar\u00a0house, they don&#8217;t even Google anything. They just go,\u00a0&#8222;Ah, yes, sounds about right.&#8221;\u00a0No second opinion, no math.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:47)\u00a0That&#8217;s exactly what happened here. They bought a second house out of fear&#8211; fear that the rent might go up. They didn&#8217;t run any numbers. They didn&#8217;t ask for any advice. They just did it.\u00a0Now,\u00a0listen, I don&#8217;t care if you buy the wrong phone charger for your phone.\u00a0Big deal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:00)\u00a0But a house,\u00a0that can literally affect your finances for decades. Ironically, in this case, the rent increase they were trying to avoid would&#8217;ve been less than the mortgage they ended up with. Now they&#8217;re losing $2,000 a month on that rental.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:17)\u00a0This is what happens when people use these simplistic terms like,\u00a0&#8222;I&#8217;m throwing money away on rent.&#8221;\u00a0But what they don&#8217;t understand is you can be throwing money away on interest. You can be throwing more money away than you have just so that you can say,\u00a0&#8222;I own.\u00a0I&#8217;m part of the American Dream.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:34)\u00a0You&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0see a pattern in how lots of people talk about major purchases. They talk about money in terms of monthly payments instead of total cost. I&#8217;m\u00a0going to\u00a0tell you straight up,\u00a0that is not how people who are savvy with money talk about their purchases.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:50)\u00a0I never talk about how much I pay per month for a major purchase. The problem with monthly payments is that you don&#8217;t account for the total cost of ownership.\u00a0And for a house or a car,\u00a0the total cost can actually be double what the sticker price is. That&#8217;s what happens when you properly factor in property taxes, insurance, maintenance, HOA fees, opportunity costs, all of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:12)\u00a0This is just another example of making major purchases based on vibes. It works until it doesn&#8217;t.\u00a0And when it doesn&#8217;t, you can be in big trouble. So if you&#8217;re thinking about buying a house, you want some help to run your numbers, check out my free,\u00a03-step guide to buying a house at iwt.com\/house.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cool. Your net worth is $425,000. Your savings are 13,000. Investments are $25,000. Let&#8217;s talk income now. Chris, I&#8217;m going to ask you for this one.\u00a0I&#8217;d like you to read me your gross combined monthly income.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a014,949.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right, so the two of you make $179,000 a year combined. Did you know that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-mm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I knew how much I made, but I didn&#8217;t know that together we made that much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. So neither of you knew. That&#8217;s quite common. 50% of people I talk to don&#8217;t know how much money they make. How much did you think you made?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Together?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Or did you not think about it ever?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, I don&#8217;t think that we think about it together because we don&#8217;t join that together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. And so is it just like monthly? Do we have enough to cover the car payment and the mortgage? Is that the approach?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We just make sure that there&#8217;s enough money in our bills account for everything to be paid, and that&#8217;s it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris, same for you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. We put most our money into that bills to make sure all those are going to be paid, and then with our own money that we have left over, we do whatever we do with it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can I ask a question? Do you think that you would ever get out of this month-to-month thinking with your money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would hope so. But how I feel now, I feel like we&#8217;re never going to get out of it. This is why we&#8217;re here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Sometimes I feel like I&#8217;m going check-to-check, in a sense, and it&#8217;s like&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Check-to-check on $180,000 a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What does that tell you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;re doing something wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. What a great answer. Because so many times in life&#8211; I learned this in math class, seventh grade. What the hell was I taking? Pre-calculus or algebra or something.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You have to work those problems. They take a lot of calculations and stuff and then you&#8217;re 5, 10 minutes into it, 15 minutes, and you&#8217;re like, &#8222;Oh\u00a0(Bleep). I&#8217;m stuck.&#8221; I basically took a wrong turn, and our math teacher taught us, if you take a wrong turn, don&#8217;t just keep brute forcing it. You got to go back and take a different approach. And I think that is true of money too, so I love your answer. It&#8217;s like, &#8222;Hey, we&#8217;re doing something wrong. I don&#8217;t know what.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0But only focusing month-to-month on 180k, something&#8217;s not working out here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Correct.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. Let&#8217;s go down the numbers.\u00a0I\u00a0want to\u00a0read off the four key numbers from the conscious spending plan. Your fixed costs,\u00a069%.\u00a0Your investments,\u00a013%.\u00a0Savings, 18%, and guilt free spending is at 0%. All right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t remember seeing when we were filling it out, the guilt-free spending part.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s because it automatically calculates how much you actually have for guilt-free spending. But I know, and you know, you&#8217;re not only spending $37 a month. Come on. When was the last time you guys ate out? Tell the truth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The other day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Recently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Exactly. And just out of curiosity, what&#8217;d you get when you ate out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mexican.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mexican food. And they gave us free tacos.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hold on. This is bringing up some very sad memories for me. I also love Mexican food. I used to live across the street from a Mexican place in New York. I went there three times a week. I went there so much, and then I met my now wife, and she started hanging out around my apartment. And one time she went there, and she comes over after and she goes, &#8222;Hey, do you want, a free burrito?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:01)\u00a0And I was like, &#8222;Excuse me?&#8221; She goes, &#8222;Yeah, they&#8217;re so nice there. They just gave me a free burrito.&#8221; I&#8217;m like, &#8222;I have\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0spent $10,000 at Dos Toros, they have never given me one free chips and salsa. Not one.&#8221; And she goes in there, just walks in with her big smile and they just hand her a free burrito. What the\u00a0(Bleep)?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. So definitely the CSP is not quite accurate. We know that, but that&#8217;s okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The point is not the first draft to be totally accurate. It&#8217;s just to get a sense. What do you think of the fact that your fixed costs are 69%?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I thought they would be way higher.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It sounds about right, to be honest with you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What&#8217;s it supposed to be, ideally?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Way less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a050 to 60% is typically what I recommend.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So if it&#8217;s 69, I can already tell what&#8217;s going on in the house. Without even talking to you, if I just look at that number, I go, &#8222;Oh, they&#8217;re probably stressed out about money. They&#8217;re probably fighting about some random expense. Who&#8217;s buying this or that? And they&#8217;re probably not saving or investing a lot.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:08)\u00a0And I think I got one of those things right, but not all of them. So I think you probably are fighting about random expenses. I think you&#8217;ve told me that. However, what&#8217;s really interesting to me is that your investments are quite high. Combined, they are 13%. Now, one of you is investing 28% and the other is investing zero. Who&#8217;s the one investing? 28% of take home pay?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m pretty sure that&#8217;s me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You make $5,709 a month?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe I answered the question wrong because are we talking about my investments, like my stocks? Yeah, that&#8217;s just in there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Who makes more?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Let&#8217;s take it from the top.\u00a0So Chris, you make 9,000 bucks a month gross. And Dominique, you make $5,700 a month gross. What&#8217;s interesting is your net is almost the same 5,200 versus 4,700. Why is that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The union takes taxes like crazy. I work in the Carpenter&#8217;s Union, and some of the money that gets taken out of my taxes goes towards a vacation fund that I receive every six months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Huh? What&#8217;s that? How&#8217;s that work?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So I guess for the union, they take out, it&#8217;s like $5 an hour on every check, and it goes towards a vacation fund. And then every six months in July and in December, you get a lump sum amount of whatever you&#8217;ve developed over that time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Why don&#8217;t they just give it to you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s just the way the union works. Because there&#8217;s times that you could take it out if, like, say something happened and you need to take it out early. You can do that. It&#8217;s like a savings account that you don&#8217;t have control of and then every six months you&#8217;re like, &#8222;Oh, let me take some out.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would go in there after three months and I&#8217;d go to my union leader and I&#8217;d be like, &#8222;Something came up. It&#8217;s an emergency.&#8221; And they&#8217;re like, &#8222;Oh, I&#8217;m sorry, Ramit. What&#8217;s wrong?&#8221; &#8222;I found a extra large suite available in Tokyo. I really need early access to this vacation plan.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, definitely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. Listen, I never heard about this, but okay, cool. So you get a certain amount back every six months. How much is that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When I was in Arizona, it&#8217;d a whole year, and I&#8217;d only get 1,300. But they were only taking $1.75 an hour. Out here, they take $5 an hour, so basically $200 a check. So within six months it&#8217;s anywhere from, I don&#8217;t know, 4 to $5,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And can I just ask, is that included in your net, or did you not put that in your net?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, I didn&#8217;t include that in the net because I don&#8217;t get that in my check.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, I get it. So you&#8217;re going to get an extra roughly 4,000 bucks every six months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, in July.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Great. Good to know. That will certainly help. You&#8217;re equally paying your mortgage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0With that, I think we did it a little bit wrong in a sense because I do get paid every week, and since I do make more, I do put more into our bills account. So it&#8217;s not exactly 50-50, in a sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So you&#8217;re paying a little bit more IC towards insurance. I can see that, an extra 100 bucks a month. You&#8217;re paying a little bit more towards a car. You probably have a more expensive car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We try to make it 50-50, in a sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It is tricky because on a gross level, one of you&#8217;s making almost double the other. Chris, you&#8217;re making more. But then on a net level, it&#8217;s quite different.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We can work through it. I just want hear your logic on it. Anyway, going back down to the investments, Chris is investing 20 bucks a month into investments. Are you getting a pension, Chris?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. That&#8217;s something I wasn&#8217;t really too sure of how to look up, and I called the union to see how that worked. And they say I have pension credits, but they didn&#8217;t really break down how much each credit is worth or things like that. So I&#8217;m not really exactly sure of how much money is in that pension, but I do know that I have five or six credits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. You&#8217;re going to want to find out. I do appreciate that you called them. That&#8217;s great. This stuff can be very confusing. What&#8217;s a pension credit? Who the hell knows? But that&#8217;s their job to explain it to you, and trust me, they will. And then in addition, if you&#8217;re not sure, you can Google it or put it into ChatGPT, upload all those docs, and they&#8217;ll tell you exactly what it means. That&#8217;ll be good to know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:37)\u00a0Okay. And then, Dominique, you&#8217;re investing quite aggressively for making $5,700 a month. So you&#8217;re putting 28% of take home pay into investments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that that&#8217;s totally wrong. That&#8217;s just the number in how much is in my stocks, because I&#8217;m not adding anything to those stocks whatsoever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh. Where did this come from? Look at these two numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That 200, for me, honestly, whatever I have left over in my checking account goes straight to savings. So yeah. But that number could fluctuate. As far as the stocks go, that&#8217;s just the total amount that I have in my stocks right now, but I&#8217;m not actually adding anything additional to them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You have 1,123 in stocks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, then what&#8217;s this number up here, 24,526?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s my 401(k).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can I ask a question? When you think of retirement accounts, what do you think of?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0401(k)s, or the pension, a Roth IRA.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Great. And when you think of investing, what do you think of?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Stocks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are they the same or different than retirement?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that they&#8217;re different, but I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t have that much knowledge about it. So of course, these are just the things that have been told to me. A 401(k) is what you retire with. Stocks are just like, if you have some extra money, you can put it in there and see what happens.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. I never mind if somebody doesn&#8217;t know something. And what you&#8217;re saying, Dominique, is so common, not knowing the relationship between stocks and retirement. It&#8217;s not obvious actually. So I can definitely walk you through how to think about it differently, and you can read it in both of these two books as well. But I&#8217;m just trying to gauge how you think about this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Looking now back at the CSP, what I can see is that you don&#8217;t put $1,123 a month into investments. Correct?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Correct.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right.\u00a0So I&#8217;m\u00a0going to\u00a0zero that out. And by the way, I don&#8217;t mind that this is a little messy. I see some comments online. They go, &#8222;Oh, Ramit should check their CSP before they come on.&#8221; Why would I? I want to see how you did it because then I can understand the logic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:49)\u00a0My goal is not to get this pristine CSP; it&#8217;s to get the real information, the real way that you talk and think and write about money. And then we&#8217;ll work through it together. So let&#8217;s fix this. 1,123, I&#8217;m zeroing that out. Is there 200 bucks a month going consistently towards investments?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That is actually the low number. It&#8217;s anywhere from 200 to 500.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;ll just keep it at 200 then. All right. Looks like y&#8217;all are very diligent about putting aside $550 a month for vacation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So this is where it got a little bit muddy for us, because we see goals. We see savings goals, what we would like. So that&#8217;s how we thought of what we would like to be putting away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What the\u00a0(Bleep)? Oh, hold on. I would like a 15 micron vicu\u00f1a hop coat.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I thought those were our dreams.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. At first it was a lot more than that. It was like $10,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a010,000 a month for vacation. First of all, we&#8217;re going to stop using the word goals. I\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0hate that word because nobody uses the word goals unless they are talking to some financial professional. &#8222;Our financial goals are&#8211;&#8221; No one talks like that. It&#8217;s a (Bleep) made up word. And then it causes all kinds of perverse behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:06)\u00a0You all are not saving $550 a month for vacations, but someday I&#8217;d like to, but I&#8217;m talking about today. That&#8217;s what the CSP is. What is actually going on? So nice to know you&#8217;d like to save $550 a month. That&#8217;s charming. Can we talk about what you&#8217;re actually doing in savings today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Sure. Zero.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. Wow. How do I zero the whole thing out at once?\u00a0Let me see. I never had to do this. 0, 0, 0. Wow. Okay. Ah, that&#8217;s more realistic,\u00a0that the two of you have $2,910 a month on guilt-free spending. And I bet that&#8217;s what you spend.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Possibly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Probably.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you spend it on? Because I know it&#8217;s not just one Mexican meal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The last couple months,\u00a0I&#8217;ve been spending a lot of money.\u00a0Chiropractic appointments, doing massage\u00a0because\u00a0of my injury. So we have been eating out a lot. I haven&#8217;t been able to cook. It&#8217;s been harder. So I&#8217;ve been spending a lot of money on that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What else?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Going to Target, just grabbing random things. I anything that we don&#8217;t have, we&#8217;re just buying it. Really expensive dog food.\u00a0I don&#8217;t know where it all goes.\u00a0But it&#8217;s going somewhere. I guess we don&#8217;t know because I don&#8217;t really think about it. We just go buy whatever we need whenever we need it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think this is more than just what you need.\u00a0Can we get past the functional stuff like feeding the dog? Y&#8217;all are not spending $3,000 a month on dogs. What else is it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So I&#8217;m at least spending $120 a week at the chiropractor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, so first of all we never talk weekly. We talk monthly, we talk annually, and at a certain point you&#8217;ll talk on a decade-long basis. So\u00a0120 a week is how much per month?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0480.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, so about 480 for that. Call it 600 a month for a massage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Food wise, that&#8217;s been tough. This has definitely been tougher for us month-wise. So I&#8217;d say food-wise, maybe $500 a month on eating out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How often do you think you eat out per week?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe once or twice a week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are you guys ready to tell the truth?\u00a0All right.\u00a0Let&#8217;s\u00a0do Ramit&#8217;s\u00a0Eating\u00a0Out\u00a0Constant. We&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0do the exercise.\u00a0All right.\u00a0We&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0start at Sunday. This is a given week.\u00a0On Sunday,\u00a0do you eat out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Usually we make breakfast at home.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Great. Do you go out for brunch, coffee, lunch, anything like that on Sundays?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Of course.\u00a0It&#8217;s not a consistent thing, but yeah, of course, we do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, great. So what would that be? What?\u00a0Brunch?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I guess you can call\u00a0it\u00a0brunch. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And how much would you spend at brunch\u00a0together?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We could spend\u00a0$100\u00a0at brunch together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right.\u00a0So what about dinner?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We don&#8217;t really do dinner a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cool. Let&#8217;s go to Monday. Anybody eating out, buying coffee, any kind of drink or anything in the morning?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I&#8217;m definitely buying Starbucks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Great.\u00a0How much does that cost?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a05.75 every single\u00a0day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s every single day?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Or five days a week. We&#8217;ll call it five days.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Five days a week.\u00a0Chris, do you do Starbucks or anything in the morning?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.\u00a0Normally I make coffee in the morning because I wake up very early to go to work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do you stop anywhere on the way to work\u00a0in the mornings on weekdays?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, I don&#8217;t stop in the morning, but on lunch I might go get a drink and a snack or something at the\u00a07-Eleven.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How many days a week would you say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Probably every day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right.\u00a0Cool.\u00a0And then what about for you, Dominique?\u00a0Coming back to you on lunch, on weekdays.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Eat at home.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Any dinners out on weekdays?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, maybe one to three.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Let&#8217;s say three. Chris,\u00a0is that accurate?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0At the moment, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, great. How about Saturday?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;d say Saturday is more of a day that we would go to brunch or go to dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. There&#8217;s a little number I invented called Ramit&#8217;s\u00a0Eating\u00a0Out\u00a0Constant, and it goes like this. Whatever somebody thinks they eat out,\u00a0multiply it by three to get the accurate number.\u00a0Now, do you recall how much you told me you eat out per week?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Three times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You said one to two times. So I say two.\u00a0Two times three would be six. But in actuality, if we add it all up,\u00a0and remember,\u00a0I&#8217;m considering each of you eating a meal separately.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Just for simplicity&#8217;s sake.\u00a0My math might be a little off, but it&#8217;s something like 17 times a week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s a scary number.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What does that tell you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That we should never be doing by that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Before we jump to solutions, just tell me what that number tells you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s just money being wasted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Without making a moral judgment on it, just like a scientist, what does that number tell you without judgment?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s just too much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris, what does that number tell you without judgment?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That we need to eat out less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What&#8217;s going on right now? To me, I just go, &#8222;Oh, that number is higher than they thought.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t mean you&#8217;re bad people. What&#8217;s with the jumping to immediately blaming yourselves and wallowing in guilt? You notice you do that a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like it&#8217;s our fault where we are financially because we do these 17 outings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hey, maybe it is. But beating yourselves up is obviously not going to work. It doesn&#8217;t work. Look at where you are financially. So maybe instead of beating yourselves up and then beating each other up and doing all this judgment, we just start looking at it like a scientist. &#8222;Hey, we&#8217;re actually eating out five times more than we thought, actually, almost 10 times more than we thought. Wow, that&#8217;s a lot. I wonder if we could make a change.&#8221; What&#8217;s the difference?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s the more accurate solution.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. It&#8217;s also more kind to yourselves. Your son, how old is he? Two years old?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What if he starts to paint or color or something and then&#8211; kids are\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0horrible at painting. And you&#8217;re like, &#8222;Jesus Christ. You used red when it should have been green?&#8221; That&#8217;s not good, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Nobody wants to talk to a little kid like that. So how come you talk to yourselves like that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like that&#8217;s just how I&#8217;ve always been. I don&#8217;t know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Who taught you that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t think that it was taught. I don&#8217;t think that there was any other way that I&#8217;ve learned. I didn&#8217;t see it any other way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t think it was taught. There was no other way that I saw.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you see right there?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I just feel like I see a lot of things in between there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Tell me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When we&#8217;re talking about my son, this is exactly why I want to make changes, so that I can be better to teach him better and to be kinder.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I like that. If you want to be kinder to him, do you think that you need to make changes for yourself in order to be kinder to him?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I think I need to be the better version of myself to be the best version for him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chris, how about you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like I need to be more positive for myself and not beat myself up about certain things as well so that I could show him how to be able to manage certain situations and have more self-care.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What Dominique and Chris are experiencing right now,\u00a0wanting to make financial changes for their son, not necessarily for themselves, is\u00a0incredibly common.\u00a0I hear it all the time from young parents. What they basically are saying is, I know I messed up with my money, but I&#8217;m not\u00a0going to\u00a0let the same thing happen to my son.\u00a0It&#8217;s\u00a0a beautiful sentiment, but it&#8217;s also wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:47)\u00a0I know. I&#8217;m sorry.\u00a0I&#8217;m\u00a0going to\u00a0pre apologize for all the parents out there that are about to hear a non-parent tell you you&#8217;re wrong, but\u00a0you are.\u00a0Being selfless, sounds great, feels good, but when it comes to money, it is an extremely bad move. Remember this:\u00a0your children have time.\u00a0You have far less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:49:06)\u00a0There are so many things they can do.\u00a0What are you\u00a0going to\u00a0do if you run\u00a0out of\u00a0money in retirement? That&#8217;s why one of the best things you can do for your children is not just to blindly start socking money away for them, but actually to model a healthy relationship with money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:49:24)\u00a0Another thing that I notice, especially with Dominique, is that she spins.\u00a0She gets stuck on the problem and loops on how bad it is. She beats herself up.\u00a0But what she doesn&#8217;t do is zoom out and look for solutions. This happens a lot, especially around smart people. Smart people have a specific set of problems that inside of my company, we call too smart for their own good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:49:46)\u00a0Smart people, they love to overthink everything.\u00a0They like to see all the angles. Well, what about this? What about that?\u00a0Option three.\u00a0Oh, what about this?\u00a0Risk mitigation.\u00a0But sometimes they need to basically tell themselves,\u00a0&#8222;Shut the hell up. Stop using my overthinking as a crutch and actually start taking action.\u00a0This is one of the things that we are seeing with Dominique, which is this incessant spinning, and we&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0get into how they both think about money right after the break.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can I ask how each of you grew up with money? Chris, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Some things were just too expensive to have or too expensive to buy. I did a sport where it&#8217;s a lot of money and my parents put everything they could to it. We got by with what we had. I didn&#8217;t have the best things. We lost our house eventually. So I&#8217;ve seen my parents struggle, and there wasn&#8217;t a lot of money. I saw my parents do everything they could to see me try to succeed in a sport that I was going after. And when that didn&#8217;t happen, you just figure it out on your own, in a sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What did your parents do for a living?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0My mom worked for Safeway for a long good while, and my dad, he had his own heating and air conditioning company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. And how would you describe socioeconomically? Would you say poor, middle-class? What would you say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We didn&#8217;t grow up having all this stuff, but I&#8217;d say, I guess, middle-class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And what was the sport that was expensive?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I raced motocross.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, okay. All right. So when you say they gave up a lot or they sacrificed a lot, is that so that you could have the vehicle, the equipment, that kind of stuff?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We just did what we could with what we had, but me and my dad were traveling a lot. It cost a lot to get new parts for the bikes, like oils, gear, just all the different ins and outs of it. So I know they were putting me first in a sense of this is what we want you to do or this is what you want to do, so we&#8217;re going to do everything we possibly can for you. It didn&#8217;t put them in the best place because they were helping me chase my dream.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Did you hear them talking about money, worried about money at home?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, all the time. And even once it got to the later part of my racing and stuff like that, when I got to a professional skill level and things were getting even worse and my dad&#8217;s business at the time wasn&#8217;t doing that great and my mom was trying to help with the business, it just caused a lot of friction at home, and they almost had to separate, because of just different situations. So it was all just a combination of money, things going on. Like I said, we lost our house at one point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can you tell me about that? What happened with the house, and how old were you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0My parents were just getting by with the finances as far as paying for the house and all that good stuff. But close to the end of my time when I was racing and we didn&#8217;t really have the money to keep going and doing it because I didn&#8217;t have sponsors and support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:59)\u00a0My dad, his business wasn&#8217;t doing too great, so my grandma used was living in Oregon, and she had some stuff going on up there. And my dad and mom weren&#8217;t having the greatest time, so he moved away, and it was just me and my mom in the house. They were still together, but they just had to separate. And it was just me and my mom together until I think 2014 or so. And finally, the house just foreclosed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow. When you look back on money in your family, what are the lessons that you take away as an adult now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know. I just live in the moment in a sense. If I got it, I spend it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can you tell me why that is?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Tomorrow&#8217;s not promised, so live in the moment. Have fun while you got it. I feel like if you have it, do what you want with it. And if you look at it the right way, things will eventually work out for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And what lessons have you brought from your upbringing with money, your parents&#8217; relationship with money, into this relationship with Dominique?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:54:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0To be honest, as much as we&#8217;re in a relationship, I feel like I&#8217;m still just worried about my own money in a sense. And we need to be worried about each other together. I live check-to-check, is how I feel. And I don&#8217;t want to be in that situation or feel like I&#8217;m in a struggle like my parents were. I want to be better, but I can&#8217;t really figure out the way to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:54:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Well, that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m glad you&#8217;re here. There&#8217;s lots of different options you have, but in order to go forward, sometimes it&#8217;s helpful to look back, see where you came from, what messages you grew up with. I think that one you told me was really honest. You said, &#8222;Look, I learned that if you have it, spend it, because tomorrow&#8217;s never promised.&#8221; By the way, feel free. We can take a break. We can pause. I know this stuff is difficult to talk about. Seems like it&#8217;s bringing up a lot for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You okay, B?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s all good.\u00a0I&#8217;ll get (Inaudible).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you don&#8217;t mind my asking, what&#8217;s difficult about talking about this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Just the fear of not having anything. And we have something more to live for than myself, like my son. I just want him to be able to do whatever he possibly wants, like what my parents did for me, no matter how struggling they were or anything like that. I just want be able to have him be able to do whatever he wants in his life and be unafraid and unapologetic for the way he goes about it. I just want him to be better than I was. And not like I was a bad kid or did bad or do anything. But of course, we all want for our kids to be better than we are.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s a beautiful vision, honestly. One day your son is going to be able to watch this. It&#8217;s beautiful to be able to see their young parents talking about this stuff this honestly. Who gets that chance? We didn&#8217;t have it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Imagine being able to see your young parents talking about being honest, saying like, I don&#8217;t know what this number is, or I&#8217;m not sure what to do. I don&#8217;t know. What a gift. You mentioned your son. Let&#8217;s say that your son gets good at some sport. Maybe it&#8217;s baseball. Maybe it&#8217;s soccer. Maybe it&#8217;s motocross. What would you want his experience to be as a kid?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0He really loves motorcycles and motocross, and if it comes to that&#8217;s what he wants to do, then I just want him to be able to put 100% into it and feel confident that he can do that. My dad taught me the most important thing is that you go and have fun and you love it. If you&#8217;re not having fun, then why do it? Because once the fun gets out of it, then it&#8217;s time to move on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So you want to keep showing him how to have fun. And what about when the practical realities of money come into it? He gets better. He starts to become really good. Boy, that&#8217;s pricey. And you know how pricey it can be. It&#8217;s getting more and more expensive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you want his experience to be? Do you want it to be the same as when you grew up?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, I want him to have no worries. I want him to feel like he&#8217;s not bringing us down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hmm. Like he&#8217;s a burden.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Were you a burden to your parents?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t think I was a burden, but if I look at how much they put towards it, especially because it didn&#8217;t work out in the end, because my ultimate career to where I could take care of them the way that I would want to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm. You&#8217;re pretty young. I&#8217;m not sure I would write that off yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0In that sport, I&#8217;m definitely old.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Fair enough on that. Maybe it&#8217;s not going to work out in that sport, but in your financial life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, definitely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You&#8217;re quite young.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So to be able to take your parents can come in lots of different ways. Sometimes I get the very rare privilege of speaking to somebody or a couple, and sometimes I can see things in them that they can&#8217;t even see in themselves. It&#8217;s a gift because I have received that gift when I had mentors and professors and friends who said just these very offhand phrases. Why don&#8217;t you do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:24)\u00a0You could do that. You should give it a shot. It&#8217;s just a simple little phrase. And sometimes I heard it, and I just thought about it later. Like, wait,\u00a0I actually could do that. I could write a book.\u00a0I could do a TV show. Who knows?\u00a0I could help my parents. And so when I hear you say like, &#8222;Oh, that didn&#8217;t work out,&#8221; okay. Maybe your professional career didn&#8217;t work out, but if the goal is to help your parents, you still got plenty of time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Dominique, as you heard Chris talking about his childhood, what were you noticing, and what were you feeling?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t ever want Chris to feel less than. And I know it was a lot for him, and so I can hear it in his voice, and I know that that was a tough time for him. So it hurts me to know that he&#8217;s hurting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I appreciate that. Dominique, do you think that Chris brings any money messages from his childhood into this relationship?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think he already said it. Tomorrow&#8217;s not promised, so if he has it, he&#8217;s going to spend it, and that&#8217;s what he is working for. And that&#8217;s exactly what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And what&#8217;s an example of that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Like the car. He thinks if he makes money, then he could just spend it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0One of the things that&#8217;s so valuable about understanding where we came from with our money messages is childhood is formative for our relationship with money. For example, parents saying we can&#8217;t afford it, or they fight about money. And if you really think about it, we don&#8217;t really learn about money much after we leave our parents&#8217; house.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:59)\u00a0Maybe you have some friends you talk about it. Maybe you read a book. Most don&#8217;t. Maybe you watch How to Get Rich on Netflix. But the point is like we don&#8217;t really learn about it except from what our parents taught us. And inevitably, we bring those messages into our adult relationships. We can see that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:16)\u00a0Every single one of us on this call does it. I do it. You both do it. Nothing to be ashamed of. It&#8217;s just something we want to be conscious of. And then especially as young parents, you can decide which messages you like and you want to pass on, and which you don&#8217;t. You choose. All right. Dominique, I&#8217;m curious about your childhood. What conversations, what phrases do you remember your family saying about money as you grew up?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We were broke.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Even if we had it, I&#8217;m not going to say that we were just super well off, but I never went for anything. My dad took really good care of me and my mom. But yeah, for him it was secret. He is taking care of everything and he just does it on his own. But he definitely instilled into me like we&#8217;re broke.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Why did he say that if you were not broke?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that that&#8217;s his way of teaching me the value of a dollar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make the connection for me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He had nothing. He is the youngest of 13, and he built his way all the way up. And he, at a very young age, bought a house and took care of me and my mom. He did everything, and he wanted to put me in a position where I didn&#8217;t have to want for anything and I didn&#8217;t have to worry, which he did. And I&#8217;m grateful. But I think he wanted me to know that there&#8217;s another side that people live completely different, and he didn&#8217;t want me to know that we had the money we did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So he said we&#8217;re broke.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s just how he was. Just super old-school. We don&#8217;t need to buy the fancy car. Even though he could do it, we don&#8217;t do it. We drive the same car until the wheels fall off.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t mind that. I could buy a fancy car or a fancy whatever. Maybe I don&#8217;t. Maybe I do. But do you guys say, &#8222;We&#8217;re broke?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like I say like we don&#8217;t have money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, you say it. Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I say a version of it. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0There we go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think I said I&#8217;m broke, actually, today or the other day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow. Here we have generational messages being passed right in front of our eyes. Hey, how long till your son starts saying we&#8217;re broke and we don&#8217;t have any money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Tomorrow. He is already saying everything that we say anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What does he say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0He started saying, oh\u00a0(Bleep), recently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yo.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Listen, I have nothing to add on this topic, except that I hope I run into a 2-year-old who says some of this stuff. I&#8217;ll be dying. All right. So your dad said, we&#8217;re broke. He was not broke. You were not broke, correct?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-mm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And would you agree that you say a variation of that same phrase now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Like, we&#8217;re screwed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are you screwed? You have a net worth of over $400,000 in your 30s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0In comparison to my dad, I feel like I haven&#8217;t done enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, how interesting. Because just a few minutes ago you said, &#8222;I don&#8217;t want to compare us to any other couple.&#8221; But now you&#8217;re comparing yourself to your dad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I put my dad pretty high, and I feel like I didn&#8217;t reach what he reached at his age, and so that&#8217;s why I feel like we&#8217;re screwed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0First of all, you&#8217;re not screwed. And how can you be screwed with a $400,000 net worth in your 30s? That&#8217;s actually absurd to say. It&#8217;s actually offensive to the people who truly are in financial trouble. You realize that, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Now that you&#8217;re saying that, I never want to come off that way whatsoever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You make $180,000 a year household income. You&#8217;re not screwed. You&#8217;re rich. You just eat out 17 times a week. Guys, come on. Let&#8217;s get real. 180k, two houses? Who are we kidding? You make some choices that you probably need to change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Sometimes we got to take off these glasses you&#8217;re wearing and clean them off and go, &#8222;Oh\u00a0(Bleep). It&#8217;s actually a beautiful world. We&#8217;ve just been living with this grease on our lenses for too long.&#8221; All right. So what else happened as you were growing up with money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like because money was never a conversation in our house whatsoever&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Did you talk to your dad about money as you got older?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0In the past, I&#8217;d say probably five to seven years, yes. I asked him absolutely everything. When we were doing the CSP, I called him and I said, &#8222;What does this mean, post-tax savings? What are we talking about?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And did your dad teach you about savings, investing, those kinds of things?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-mm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What did he teach you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t want to say nothing because he is taught me everything, but money-wise, nothing. So now I&#8217;m here, and then it&#8217;s like, okay, now I have a house. This is where my mind starts running. This is why I&#8217;m asking questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. When it came to buying your house, how&#8217;d you guys decide to buy this house? Just the rent thing in Arizona? That was it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The big thing was the rent thing. Chris&#8217;s grandma had passed away prior to that, and of course, that was one of her goals for him. I think buying a house was one of the goals that my dad had for me too. So I feel like it would&#8217;ve been an accomplishment to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hmm. For whom?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0For us, I guess.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The two of you? How come if you not only accomplished buying one house, bought two, it sounds like somebody just died in here?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;re fortunate that we&#8217;re here in this house because of her dad helped us get this house.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How much did he give you to help with the house?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Well, he put down 400,000 on this one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0He put down 400,000?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The California house, how much did it cost total?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0601,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, so he put 400k out of 600k down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. What do you think about that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That I&#8217;m extremely fortunate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. That&#8217;s cool. All right. It&#8217;s interesting that your dad has been such a role model. It sounds like he accomplished a lot. He helped tremendously with a 400 out of 600k payment, which is life changing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And yet I&#8217;m struck that you didn&#8217;t learn about savings, investing, the basics of money. What do you make of that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s just something that we never talked about, and so that&#8217;s why I feel like I&#8217;m behind, because I&#8217;m trying to figure it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You all talk about savings and investing in your relationship?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We definitely talk about savings because Dominique likes to tell me that I need to save more. As far as investments, I don&#8217;t really feel like either one of us have enough information about investments or how to go about the investments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Did do you say you&#8217;re in the Carpenter&#8217;s Union?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Acoustical ceilings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So, hey, Chris, I&#8217;m thinking of joining the union as well, California Carpenters Union. Did you know that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, I didn&#8217;t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, the only problem is, I don&#8217;t think I can do it because I don&#8217;t have enough information about framing. So therefore I&#8217;m going to stay unemployed for the next eight years. What&#8217;s your response to that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Well, you could start by going to the Union Hall and asking them about how the whole union side of things works.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, I just don&#8217;t know where I would start though.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Well, you look up the Union Hall by where you&#8217;re located in your county. You can go there, give them a call, and they could give you a little more information on how, if you are interested in going for a certain trade. They have classes. You start off as an apprentice one, and you learn from there over the years to get higher up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. First of all, I really enjoyed that. Chris, what&#8217;d you notice about my responses?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You were still not getting it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, yes. I was not getting it. Totally. What you were saying, all factually correct, and you could see from my body language. I was like. &#8222;It sounds pretty hard.\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0Union Hall. Sounds like a bit of a drive.&#8221; Right? This\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0guy doesn&#8217;t get it. What was your emotional reaction to that as you kept talking and giving me valuable information?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe he&#8217;s just not as interested as he came off of about being interested.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, yeah. You&#8217;re like, &#8222;Dude, information? What the (Bleep)? I just told you exactly what to do. It&#8217;s not that hard. Take one step and then one step more.&#8221; Do you see why I don&#8217;t really buy your answer about I don&#8217;t have information about investing?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s literally right here. Or you can get it for free or you can Google how to invest. It&#8217;s everywhere. It&#8217;s on my Instagram account. It&#8217;s everywhere. So what is it really? Because with me, it was probably just that I&#8217;m lazy or I wasn&#8217;t actually interested in a union job, or I want someone to do it for me or whatever. What is it for you when it comes to investing?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Just where to start.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s the equivalent of me going to the Union Hall. Do you see yourself as somebody who invests money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No. I don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;m investing money into or what exactly an investment is in a sense. What&#8217;s considered an investment?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And what type of person invests? What do they look like?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0A normal human, someone that has money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, so what they&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m not really sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What they look like?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know. High end flows.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Showing off where their money&#8217;s going in a sense, like with what they have, their cars, their assets, things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. So they got a nice car. Maybe they&#8217;re wearing some nice clothes, that type of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Unless they&#8217;re faking it till they&#8217;re making it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are they wearing a baseball cap and a gold chain?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0They might.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0They might. I agree.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chain can be 5, $10, or it could be thousands. Who knows?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hell yeah. That&#8217;s a cool answer. My point, Chris, is that, yes, I agree you don&#8217;t know what to invest in. Fair enough. But I don&#8217;t think your parents probably talked a lot about investing. Were they sitting around discussing the finer points of diversification? I don&#8217;t think so. And I would suspect that you don&#8217;t see yourself as the kind of person who invests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe not I don&#8217;t see myself as the kind of person, but I&#8217;m not doing it. So I don&#8217;t know what the person looks like that invests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Could it be you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It could be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, great. Looking back on Dominique sharing her upbringing with money, what money messages that she grew up with do you think she brings to your relationship?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t really know if she really brings those money messages<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How about money habits?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t really know because I don&#8217;t know what she puts most of her money towards as far as money habits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you think, Dominique? What messages or behaviors do you bring from your childhood to this relationship?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that I always just say we don&#8217;t have it, and I think that that makes Chris feel less confident as well about what he does or does not have, because my initial instinct is we don&#8217;t got it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Right. I agree. You say that. And in what other ways of your money does that belief show up?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Investment is definitely one. I feel like if we don&#8217;t have it, then we&#8217;re not putting anything towards investments, but in other ways we are just spending the money how we&#8217;d like to, because we feel like we don&#8217;t have it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, very perceptive. So you tell yourself, you have this deeply held belief, we don&#8217;t have it, and therefore you spend thousands of dollars every month, which obviously you literally are eating it or drinking it or consuming it in some way. But that belief is so strong that it actually blinds you to consuming these things on a daily basis. That&#8217;s how powerful our beliefs can be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s quite shocking, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0But for me, it&#8217;s a great opportunity because if we can change our beliefs, then sometimes we can change our realities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Facts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.\u00a0Let&#8217;s take a look at the CSP again.\u00a0I have some questions for you. Where is childcare on this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0To be honest with you, I don&#8217;t think that we put it in there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think we put it in debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I think we might have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, fine. So\u00a0how much is your childcare per month?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s $120 a month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0120 a month? How are you only paying $120 a month for childcare?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So it&#8217;s about to change, but it&#8217;s because I&#8217;m a single mother, and that&#8217;s just the rate that we got based off of the county that we live in. It&#8217;s going to go up to $120 a week in two weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, it&#8217;s going to quadruple.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How are you going to handle that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s a big concern of ours, of mine. At this point, his daycare is coming out of my savings account.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So I guess we&#8217;re just going to keep doing that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Do you find that when it comes to money, you both are pretty reactive, like, we&#8217;ll figure it out when it happens?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like there is no other option, but figuring it out. We have to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;ll take that as a yes. Do you know there is other options? If I was in the same situation, and you asked me, &#8222;Hey, how are you going to pay for quadrupling your childcare.&#8221; Do you think that I would ever say like, &#8222;oh gosh, I don&#8217;t know?&#8221; I guess we&#8217;re just going to have to figure it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, probably not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What would I say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know because I don&#8217;t even know how I&#8217;m going to figure it out myself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Let&#8217;s play a hypothetical. What would I say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m going to put a little bit extra away each month towards that so that when the time comes, I know that I&#8217;m in a better position financially.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Nice. So I would&#8217;ve seen this coming down the road, say six months early. Maybe I would&#8217;ve started putting some money aside. Love that. Yes. That&#8217;s great. That&#8217;s being proactive. I love that. And then the next question, of course, is like, where would the money be coming from?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that the money&#8217;s definitely coming from the savings that I&#8217;ve been putting away in preparation for this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The savings of $13,198?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. It&#8217;s already coming out of my savings, and so I knew that we were going to be paying more anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s good. How long will that savings last you if you needed to&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Not long.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You know how long?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Honestly, I&#8217;m just waiting for something to happen in any one of the houses and it&#8217;s gone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s called being reactive. I&#8217;m waiting for something bad to happen so that I can respond to disaster.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Realistically, if we&#8217;re thinking about everything that we&#8217;re paying for, maybe it&#8217;ll last us a month or two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Two months. That&#8217;s it. Two months, and you have a little 2-year-old.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you think about that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;re screwed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t think saying the same words is probably the right move to get you to make a change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, I agree.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m struck that sometimes one of the ways that I can help people unlock from their habits and being stuck is to ask them a hypothetical. Hey, what would a guy like me do? Or what would somebody else do? And sometimes people are game to play with the hypothetical. Sometimes they&#8217;re not. I feel like this one is a tough one. It&#8217;s tough for you to engage in a hypothetical. Have you noticed that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think it&#8217;s just overwhelming.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. I agree. There&#8217;s a lot of things, variables here. Part of what is helpful about this is that you can stop thinking and put yourself in my hands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. I think that&#8217;s hard for me. I think I am definitely a thinker. I think too much about it, and then that&#8217;s what gets overwhelming when really it could be simple.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you get out of overthinking things?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Nothing. It just takes me into a big, dark hole.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s not true. If you didn&#8217;t get something out of it, you wouldn&#8217;t do it. What positive rewards do you get out of overthinking?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, gosh. A positive from overthinking? Maybe I think that if I overthink it, then it makes sense not to do something, or to do something, or I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t feel like I get any positives out of my overthinking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You want to try it one more time?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What&#8217;s the right answer? Genuinely, I don&#8217;t know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When you overthink something, when I&#8217;m asking you a question or you&#8217;re looking at some number, take the childcare example, and you&#8217;re thinking, okay, we could do this. We could do that. We could do this. I don&#8217;t know about that. But then if we do this, it&#8217;s going to cause this thing down the road in retirement. This is what&#8217;s going through your head, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What are you feeling? What positive emotion are you feeling?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe that I&#8217;m thinking about everything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. And you got everything. What does make you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know. I feel like because I&#8217;m thinking about everything that I&#8217;m handling it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. You feel like you&#8217;re in control because you&#8217;ve thought of all the angles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, which is also the bad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You feel like you are smart because you&#8217;ve looked around every corner. Any of these sound familiar?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Dominique:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I feel like certain things, if I think enough about it, then I make the better decision maybe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s true. You have two months of savings. You&#8217;re not investing. You&#8217;re spending 10 times what you thought on eating out. You feel like you&#8217;re running a marathon in your head, and you&#8217;re sweating and exhausted, but you actually haven&#8217;t taken a single step. And Chris, where are you in these discussions about quadrupling childcare?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I know that it&#8217;s happening, but&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Isn&#8217;t it important? You make twice as much as she does?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I also put twice as much towards our bills and things like that as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Huh? I don&#8217;t see that. Look at this. She puts a higher percentage towards your fixed cost than you do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Chris:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t think we did it correctly because I actually put anywhere from 50 to 60% of my check each week into our bills account.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. You guys are missing the point. You&#8217;re sitting here talking about weekly basis. I don&#8217;t care. I&#8217;m never going to talk about weekly. I&#8217;m trying to get you to elevate and look at how you&#8217;re thinking about money, and you&#8217;re talking about weekly basis? We&#8217;re not speaking the right language at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay,\u00a0I&#8217;m getting frustrated. This thinking is exactly why Dominique and Chris feel like they have zero money. They are playing small. They made major financial decisions using shallow thinking, monthly thinking.\u00a0And when you are only looking at what you can afford next month, you are missing the big picture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:56)\u00a0I\u00a0got to\u00a0tell you, this is actually really common. Most Americans, in my experience, do not plan long term. They&#8217;ve never been taught how.\u00a0Take the everyday person.\u00a0They live thinking about what&#8217;s happening today,\u00a0maybe next week, maybe up to the month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:20:13)\u00a0But if you ask somebody,\u00a0&#8222;Hey, if you take this vacation, how is it going to affect your finances three months from now?&#8221;\u00a0They&#8217;d be like,\u00a0&#8222;What?&#8221;\u00a0Three years from now, 30 years from now?\u00a0They look at me like I ask them to solve a physics equation. This is not part of how most people think, but that&#8217;s my job. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m doing what I&#8217;m doing. My job is to get you to zoom out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:20:35)\u00a0And that is exactly what I&#8217;m\u00a0going to\u00a0do with Dominique\u00a0and Chris next week\u00a0when I shift the burden back onto them and make them take control of their money.\u00a0In part two of our conversation, we&#8217;ll talk about how to handle rising childcare costs, how to actually build a plan and to think long-term, and most importantly, how to avoid passing these same money messages onto their son.\u00a0Stay tuned. That&#8217;s coming next week.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\nn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\nif(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\nn.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\nt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);\ns.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\nfbq('init', '259290718675278');\nfbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/217-dominique-chris-1\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=217-dominique-chris-1\"> Nuoroda \u012f informacijos \u0161altin\u012f <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dominique (33) and Chris (34) have been together for six years, engaged for two, and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3613,3612,3521,3327,3614],"class_list":["post-1933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sekmes-istorijos-patarimai","tag-bad","tag-brokeor","tag-episode","tag-money","tag-part"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptai.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}