260. "We’re in our 40s and forgot to invest. Are we screwed?"

Summary

Podcast Summary: Money For Couples with Ramit Sethi

Episode 260: “We’re in our 40s and forgot to invest. Are we screwed?”
Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Ramit Sethi
Guests: Nicole & Shane

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Overview of Episode Theme

Ramit Sethi coaches Nicole (40) and Shane (48), an engaged couple about to blend their finances and lives. Both have been financially independent, but now face the complex realities of combining monetary habits, planning for children, and securing their long-term financial future—all with the realization they haven’t invested as aggressively as they could have in their 40s. The central question: Are they "screwed," and how can they course-correct for a “Rich Life” together?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. First Money Conversations & Financial Styles

• Shane (saver) and Nicole (spender but intentional) initially clashed over Nicole’s $10,000/month spending.
• [07:14] Shane: “I was very scared... That’s totally contradictory to my vision of saving.”
• Nicole tracks her spending meticulously and prioritizes lifestyle (travel, fashion, helping family) while saving and using targeted accounts. Shane lives almost without fixed expenses due to employer-covered housing and food, enabling him to save by default.

2. Combining Finances & Money Teamwork

• Both grapple with moving from “my money, your money” to “our money”.
• Ramit empathizes, noting this shift as hard even for experts.
  • [03:16] Ramit: “That singledom, the total control over my money... I realized it was about our money and us having conversations and sometimes me being wrong.”
• Nicole feels judged for her spending; Shane recognizes he has sometimes contributed to that feeling.

3. Conscious Spending Plan (CSP) Deep Dive

• Assets, investments, and net worth:
  • Nicole: $220K net worth (Assets: $20K, Investments: $96K, Savings: $100K, Debt: $4K)
  • Shane: $366K net worth (Assets: $225K, Investments: $143K, Savings: $165K, Debt: $167K)
  • Both are in decent positions but under-invested for their ages.
• Income:
  • Nicole: ~$10K/mo gross; Shane: $10K/mo gross post-promotion.
  • Combined gross: $241K/yr.
  • [21:44] Ramit: “Both of you, well done. And Shane, especially that 50% salary increase is awesome.”

4. Major Financial Blind Spots

• Investments are too low for their age and goals. Ramit reiterates the danger of not putting idle cash to work:
  • [26:26] Ramit: “You don’t have enough money to do all this stuff guilt free spending. You’re at a negative.”
• Over $265,000 in cash savings earning little interest.
• Nicole mixes business and personal accounts (“sloppy junk drawer”), further obscuring true spending and saving rates.
• They know what they spend/save, but lack clear projections, planning, and unified vision.

5. Prenup & Power Dynamics

• Nicole (higher earner) brings up a prenup—Shane feels it’s unromantic and invalidates commitment.
  • [24:47] Ramit: “What we often think of as gender issues are often power issues.”
• Ramit encourages confronting tough topics (“Once you ask, you can’t just let it go”) and rethinking gendered money norms.

6. Projected Retirement & Alarm Bells

• Projected retirement sum at current pace: $1.7M.
  • [56:00] Shane: “Great.”
  • [56:00] Nicole: “It’s not enough to live where we live.”
• 4% withdrawal rule means they’d only have ~$68K/year; not enough for combined goals, private school, or desired lifestyle.

7. Key Areas for Immediate Action

• Separate business and personal finances.
  • Hire an accountant, open distinct accounts, stop commingling.
  • [47:21] Ramit: “This is why you’ve got to use a separate credit card.”
• Move cash into investments—start with an aggressive push now, as their biggest lost opportunities come from not investing earlier.
• Define the Rich Life Vision Together: Private education, travel, flexibility take priority over buying a costly home.
  • [84:46] Shane: “Private education for our children. Boat. Ocean house on the coast. Travel.”
  • [86:14] Shane: “I don’t care where I live. I really don’t.”
• Ramit’s Modeling: Demonstrates via CSP simulator that their “messy math” and lack of projections severely underestimates both risk and what is required to realize their future goals.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Fear and Lifestyle Friction

• [09:13] Nicole: “Now that we're, like, combining finances... Can I buy this like $500 dress now? Or how does this work?”
• [43:14] Shane: “I've always checked my account balances... because I always knew it was increasing.”
• [43:21] Ramit: “What you just said is the equivalent of a baker saying, I think this pie is going to be good because it’s rising.”

On the Consequences of Not Investing

• [104:11] Ramit: “It's cost you a lot, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars to let the money sit in a savings account. All of this tracking of, like, random categorization isn't worth 12 months of this compounding.”
• [104:28] Shane: “Yeah.”

On Upbringing and Money Scripts

• [73:05] Shane (about his bookie father): “Don’t let it control you. If you get it, spend it, enjoy life.”
• [79:14] Nicole (on her grandpa): “He really, like, lived the luxurious life that I thought... the thing I really took away from my parents would be like, we saved to buy the thing.”

On Facing Reality & Fixing the Plan

• [105:53] Ramit (advice): “If it were me, what I would do is I would keep a year's worth of emergency fund… and the rest I would invest.”
• [112:44] Ramit: “You… have a lot of time before your income goes down. So I'd use that time really wisely.”

On Joint Decisions and The Power of Agency

• [109:13] Ramit: “We are not looking for the perfect math at this stage. We're not looking for that. What we are looking for is just general thrusts that put us in the right universe...”

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |--------------|----------------------------------------------------| | 02:11-05:22 | Ramit introduces Nicole & Shane, CSP rundown | | 07:14-08:44 | First real money talk—$10,000/month spending shock | | 09:13-09:46 | Nicole on feeling judged, lifestyle doubts | | 14:55-15:55 | Nicole on expected income drop, baby plans | | 17:30-19:00 | CSP review: assets, investments, net worth | | 21:41-22:56 | Income reveals, discussion of raise and impact | | 23:02-25:47 | Prenup, gender dynamics, power in relationships | | 30:35-32:17 | Deep dive on fixed costs, business expense tangles | | 36:27-37:19 | Shane’s “timing the market” investing strategy | | 39:06-40:49 | Analysis: too much languishing in savings | | 41:52-44:26 | Savings breakdown, lack of vision and projections | | 55:45-57:10 | Retirement projection, “not enough” realization | | 61:37-62:23 | How Nicole built the nanny agency, business model | | 63:20-65:48 | What happens when income drops, buffer runs out | | 70:28-71:12 | How real CSPs are often messy and inaccurate | | 72:36-75:53 | Parents’ money scripts, financial upbringing | | 83:03-84:24 | Couples’ joint money identity (confused/unplanned) | | 84:24-85:59 | Building a new Rich Life joint vision | | 88:53-89:26 | Stop sending Zillow links—mixed money signals | | 90:08-91:39 | Modeling fixed cost impact of moving | | 97:44-98:48 | Saving vs. investing for future tuition | | 100:02-101:28| Retirement safe withdrawal rate evaluation | | 102:11-104:11| Investment effectiveness, lost compounding | | 106:47-108:48| Practical steps for action, revised allocations | | 113:05-116:09| Follow-up: post-wedding, action steps, results |

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Concrete Action Steps & Results (From Follow-Up)

• Both funded Roth IRAs; Shane opened his first ever.

• Invested $50,000 each from savings into investment accounts, planning to “tranche” investments over several months.

• Nicole separated business/personal expenses and hired an accountant.

• Opened personal checking and joint credit card for shared expenses/travel rewards.

  • [115:37] Nicole: “I have separated my business expenses. We hired an accountant... and we opened a joint credit card to benefit Miles and Travel.”

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Final Takeaways & Guidance from Ramit

• Begin investing now; every year lost is hundreds of thousands gone to the math of compounding.
• Business owners: Never commingle business and personal finances.
• Don’t over-optimize categories/track to the decimal—work on housing, investment, and vision.
• Your “Rich Life” as a couple must be designed intentionally, not assumed from two single individuals’ past lives.
• Stop defaulting to “just pick up another shift”—plan for less flexible financial periods (like parenthood).

Closing Thought:

[113:14] Ramit:
“I don’t expect perfection... What I want you to understand is that most couples spend months planning a wedding without ever sitting down and asking, how much do we have? How much can we afford? What is our philosophy on money? … Now they are starting to have a shared vision… and the urgency to start building their rich life using the money that they have now.”

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For further help with your own money conversations or conscious spending plans, visit iwt.com/moneycoaching.

Transcript

[Ramit Sethi]

Think about all the things that you

said you would do this year back in January. Well, it's May now and I'm the one who's going to ask you how are those things coming along?

I don't mean to shame you. I just want to help you get where you want to go this year. So if you are not where you thought you would be by almost halfway

through the year, the good news is

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way at some point.

It starts with getting specific. You don't say, I want to start cooking for myself. Instead you say, I'm going to cook

dinner twice a week. Way more specific.

Then you plan what will happen when you fail. Fill in the blank. If I miss a week, I will. What if I get too busy? I will. What? That's your contingency plan? This is just one tiny way to make sure that you follow through with the things that you start. And this week I'm opening up the programs that I have built that can help you finish the year differently, including Finisher's formula. Go to iwt.com programs and and use code reset26 to get 25% off select

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[Shane]

You spend 10 effing thousand dollars a month.

[Nicole]

Now that we're like combining finances, can I buy this like $500 dress now? Or how does this work?

[Shane]

That's where some of my apprehension comes in. How is this going to work with the amount of money that she spends?

[Ramit Sethi]

According to this, you might be spending more than you make every single month.

[Nicole]

I'm pretty much spending exactly as much as I'm making.

[Shane]

Just because you write it all down in these spreadsheets doesn't mean that it's accurate or it's actually working.

[Ramit Sethi]

You don't have enough money to do all this stuff guilt free spending. You're at a negative. Like it would make no sense for the two of you to be making $179,000 and not be able to go out to a coffee. Investments are. Shane has 143k, Nicole has 96k. That's too low. You're 40, is that right? You got to be investing. You got to put that money to work. What you are at risk for is not having enough money as you get older. You better start investing aggressively today.

For those of you in a relationship, when was the moment where you combined your finances? I'm not just talking about combining a bank account. I'm talking about when you really felt that you were a financial team. When you saw money not as mine and theirs, but ours. I'll tell you that for me, that shift was harder than I expected. I had been talking about money, thinking about money every single day for decades. Nobody asked me any questions about how my automation flows were set up. I never had to justify anything or discuss it. None of it. When my now wife and I got engaged, we started seriously talking about money. Then we got married. That singledom, the total control over my money. I realized that chapter had to close. Even though I was really proud of my system, my way of doing things now I realized it was about our money and us having conversations and sometimes me being wrong. Today I am speaking with Nicole and Shane. They've been together for eight months. They're getting married in 11 days and they're both in their 40s. She's 40, he's 48. And until now, they have spent years doing money their individual way.

Nicole read my book three years ago

and as a result, she built a rich life around travel and great food and buying a $500 dress whenever she feels like it. Shane is a natural saver. His job covers almost all of his living expenses, so money has never really stressed him out. They have two very different financial lives and now they're trying to build one together. Let's see what the numbers say on their conscious spending plan. If you want my help with your own CSP, you can join my money coaching [e-mail] MoneyCoaching Assets 245,000 Investments 239,900 Savings 265,000 Debt $171,664 Net worth $588,000. Fixed cost 36%.

Wow, that's low.

Investments 14% Savings 42%. That's interestingly high. And guilt free spending, very low at 8%. Okay, right away you can see that they have done a lot right. But remember, Nicole built her rich Life, for one. The question is, how do they combine their finances to start working as a team? Let's find out.

So I understand that the two of you are recently engaged and planning a wedding. Congratulations. When's the wedding?

[Shane]

In 11 days.

[Ramit Sethi]

How long have the two of you been together?

[Nicole]

Since about May of this year.

[Ramit Sethi]

Oh, hey, listen, my parents met. Seven days later, they were married. You know, that's how it goes sometimes. Where'd you all meet?

[Nicole]

Online.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, cool. And obviously, I want to talk about money today and many other things, but what was the first time that money came up when the two of you were dating?

[Shane]

So we were hanging out, and we were talking about how much money we made per month, and she told me that she made 12,000amonth. And I was like, oh, you make more than I do. Congratulate. You know, I was very proud of her. And she said, of. Of that 12,000, how much do you think I spent per month? It was kind of just like a cute game. We were just, you know, flirting. She has very fine tastes and things, and she doesn't let her money kind of bog her down and going after what she wants. So my guess was 4,000, you know, and I was like, that sounds about right. And she was like, no. And I thought she was saying no. Like, I was high, but then I kind of looked at her facial expression and. And I'm like, oh, it's higher. And she's like, yeah. And I was like, six. And she's like, no. And I was like, now I'm sweating, you know, I'm like, eight. She's like, no, baby. And I'm like, well, well, how much do you effing spend a month? You know? And she's like, 10. And I was like, you spend 10 effing thousand dollars a month. Like, what do you spend all your money?

[Ramit Sethi]

When you heard 10,000, what'd you feel?

[Shane]

I was very scared. I didn't know how, you know, because that's totally contradictory to, you know, I guess, my vision of saving or spending. I just thought it was really high. And then she kind of told me, like, what she spends her money on. And so that's kind of where our first conversation about money started.

[Ramit Sethi]

What was your impression, Nicole, of that conversation?

[Nicole]

I did think he was scared after that conversation. And we had had conversations prior about the way that I travel and that I do travel a lot, and that isn't something that he does. So I kind of knew that I was spending more. Plus, from where I lived into where I live now, like, the Spending changes quite a lot. And the clientele that I have for my business, they spend a lot of money. So I remember thinking, like, oh, that was definitely more than he thought. But then feeling the need to sort of explain myself, like, in that 10,000, you know, 3,000 of that is savings every month. Like, because I track, as you might see, on our expenses, I track, like, every dollar I spend. Only because I just wanted to know,

[Ramit Sethi]

are you explaining your own spending to me right now?

[Nicole]

Yeah. And why this is what I felt like I needed to do for him, so I did.

[Ramit Sethi]

Why?

[Nicole]

Because I really liked him and I was excited and I knew this was going to be something, so I didn't want to, like, scare him away with my, like, spending.

[Ramit Sethi]

I'd like to read something from your application. Nicole. You wrote, I have been living my rich life, and now I am unsure of how to incorporate a marriage and child into it. My current lifestyle will not sustain these exciting changes. Shane has a unique living situation where all his housing, food, and utilities are covered. I feel judged by my lifestyle. What did you mean when you wrote that line in the application?

[Nicole]

Now that we're, like, combining finances, it's like, I do feel like, is this, Can I buy this, like, $500 dress now? Or how does this work? Because in my rich life, that was fine. But now as a couple, I want to. I want it to still be fine.

[Ramit Sethi]

Gotcha.

[Nicole]

And maybe it's something I needed to reconcile with myself too. But before, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. And now I'm thinking about these expenses in a way that I haven't before because it didn't really matter.

[Ramit Sethi]

Shane, when you hear Nicole say, I feel judged by my lifestyle, what's your reaction to that?

[Shane]

I guess initially, when I just heard you state that and her confirm that, I was trying to think back to when I've been judgmental. And I guess I've, you know, using humor, raised an eyebrow at some of her purchases. I felt uncomfortable with some of her purchasing. And I guess my worry is that how are we going to start a family and maybe buy a house down the road if we're not strategized to save to do those things? So, you know, I'm sorry if you felt judged. Nicole, my intention was to never judge you. It's always to understand you.

[Ramit Sethi]

Nicole, you mentioned your rich life. You said, I'm living my rich life. What is your rich life? Day to day?

[Nicole]

I read the book that I will teach you to be rich three years ago. I want to say, and Implemented it for myself as a single person. So I've put five different savings accounts together for the things that I've sort of prioritized being travel expenses of, like, extravagance, meaning the $500 dress has sort of become a joke between he and I. But if I want to buy that, you know, there's an account for that. So I don't really think about it. I don't typically cook too much. That's kind of changing, too. So I had a pretty large budget for dining out, and I guess the fourth one is I pay for my sister's children to attend school.

[Ramit Sethi]

What do you feel when you just explain those buckets to me?

[Nicole]

I feel great about them.

[Ramit Sethi]

I love it. I love when people feel great about spending money intentionally that they can afford. That's awesome.

[Nicole]

No, it felt. It feels really good. I mean, I have been on really amazing trips. I've been to Switzerland and Germany and Austria, and, you know, I had a bucket for that.

[Ramit Sethi]

I love that. Well done. Shane, do you have an equivalent set up in your finances for what Nicole just described?

[Shane]

I do not.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, okay. Does what she is saying. Does it make sense to you, having separate savings accounts?

[Shane]

Yes, it does. I think the intentionality of doing things in the way that she has set them up, you know, allows her to feel so great about her spending and know that she's going to be okay and that there's no guilt in what she's doing. And that's. That's great.

[Ramit Sethi]

I envy that you envy it, but you have not set the same thing up in your own without judgment. I'm curious.

Why not?

[Shane]

You know, why I haven't done that is because I haven't really needed to do that because I don't have many fixed costs for what I do for a living. And I never had to worry about money, Whatever I wanted to do, within reason. I mean, you know, if I want to go out and buy, you know, a very nice sweater, jacket, fishing gear, go skiing, I can do that. And I don't even have to look at my savings account because I know the money's in there.

[Ramit Sethi]

Let me understand what you both do for a living. Nicole, can you start?

[Nicole]

I started a babysitting nannying service. So I place nannies and babysitters with families. I have an app that families can go on and book through, and then I have a list of sitters that are distributed accordingly. And then I work for three or four of those families, specifically, mostly traveling with them.

[Ramit Sethi]

What a cool job. All right, I love that. And Shane, what about you?

[Shane]

I work for a non profit that's a long term residential recovery program for college staged young men. And I've recently been promoted to the acting chief operational officer and the vice president of operations. Cool.

[Ramit Sethi]

And just so I understand correctly, you mentioned you don't have, I think it's rent or other fixed costs like food. Is that because you are housed at the facility?

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, so what other benefits do you get? Just so I know. Housing, food, anything else?

[Shane]

Sometimes transportation, cable. I just basically all costs. Yeah. Except for cell phone. Wow, amazing.

[Ramit Sethi]

That's quite amazing. Yeah.

[Shane]

Right. So all that money I get to save, it just goes into the bank.

[Ramit Sethi]

Cool. How do you feel about that? It's quite an interesting job. I mean an interesting career position to have all fixed costs covered. How do you feel about that?

[Shane]

It feels great.

[Ramit Sethi]

What happens when you get married? Will your housing situation change?

[Shane]

Yes. So I'm going to move in with Nicole. She's renting.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, gotcha. Now, Nicole, you said in your application you are, quote, unsure how to incorporate marriage and a child into your rich life. What? What do you mean? What part feels hard to incorporate?

[Nicole]

Hopefully we'll be having a baby soon and I will not be able to sustain the life that I'm currently living in terms of work because I won't be able to travel and be away for, you know, months and weeks on end. So essentially my income and my part of the agency will kind of go away. I'll still have sitters working for me, but that pretty much cuts my salary like in salary in half. So obviously, you know, the $500 dress either needs to be like reallocated or not purchased in the same way that it has been up until now. And it is important to both of us that I, you know, stay home and, and with the child and, and not traveling.

[Ramit Sethi]

And the question is, how do we make it all work? Is that right?

[Nicole]

Yes. I'm not walking away from the agency entirely, so I'll still have the babysitters working for me, but that's. It's about 50. 50.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, so your income will drop by, let's say half by half.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, so this is interesting. And just conceptually, what do you think is the answer here? If the high earner is going to take a 50% pay cut and add on a child? What's the solution here?

[Nicole]

Well, then I won't need the travel savings account anymore because I'm probably not gonna be going anywhere. My spending needs to go down.

[Ramit Sethi]

You're spending, you're saying conceptually should go down. Okay.

[Nicole]

Right.

[Ramit Sethi]

Anything else?

[Nicole]

Yeah, I mean, Shane is planning on participating in my monthly expenses, but my fixed costs are fixed fairly low where I'm renting.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. Shane, you. You got anything to add here?

[Shane]

I think we're going to be able to do this successfully. I just think that there's some planning that needs to go into it. I obviously want Nicole to be happy and not feel like she's making a tremendous sacrifice in. In doing this, because this has all been extremely joyful for me. And I think this is one aspect that I don't necessarily think we've been avoiding, but we've been so busy that we really need to take some time to focus on this solely to kind of make some progress of, like, planning on how we're going to continue to live in a situation where our money works for us. We're both happy, our. We're aligned, and our priorities are in sync.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, I agree. Sounds good. I want to look at your numbers. What was it like to do the conscious spending plan together?

[Shane]

It was fun.

[Ramit Sethi]

Any surprises?

[Shane]

No. She already told me how much she spent a month, so that wasn't a surprise.

[Ramit Sethi]

Good. And, Nicole, were you surprised at all?

[Nicole]

Yeah. No, I don't think there were any surprises. We had been having those conversations, we'd have been those sit downs.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, let's take a look. Now, you have your money separate. Right now, you're not married, but as of 11 days from now, you're going to be married. So we have all of them individual and combined, which is very helpful. Nicole, can you read off your numbers here and the word in bold next to it, please, for this entire column?

[Nicole]

Assets, 20,000. Investments, 96,400. Savings, 100,000. Debt, 4,300. Total net worth, $220,700.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. And, Shane, can you do the same thing for your numbers, please?

[Shane]

Sure. Assets, I have 225,000. Investments, I have 143,500. Savings, 165,000. And debt, 167,364. Total net worth, 366,136.

[Ramit Sethi]

This is quite interesting. What do you make of these numbers?

[Shane]

They're awesome.

[Ramit Sethi]

Wow. Okay, cool. Nicole, they're great.

[Nicole]

I think. Yeah, I think they're great.

[Ramit Sethi]

So I want to point out that Nicole makes more than Shane, but Shane has a higher net worth by approximately $140,000. Nicole has $20,000 in assets. Nicole, what are those assets?

[Nicole]

My car and some jewelry.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. And then Shane has $225,000 in assets. What's that? What are those assets, Shane?

[Shane]

I bought a townhouse. I have a car and a boat.

[Ramit Sethi]

Investments are.

They're.

They're kind of comparable. Not really. Shane has 143k. Nicole has 96k, so about 40, 50% more. Okay, let's move on. Savings, kind of similar cadence. We have 100k for Nicole, 165k for Shane. That is striking to me because the way that you described your finances was Nicole spends, like, a lot. Right. And. And then Shane has no fixed cost whatsoever, so he puts it all into savings. But actually the numbers are not too far off from each other. That's kind of interesting to me. And then finally, debt. Nicole has 4300. Nicole, what kind of debt is that?

[Nicole]

I just had Lasik eye surgery, so that'll be paid off. I have an account for it.

[Ramit Sethi]

Oh, okay. You have the money, you just finance it because it's like 0% for six months or something. Yeah. All right. And then what's your debt, Shane?

[Shane]

Student loans and mortgage.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right. Overall, solid. Just kind of interesting to see the difference in the way you describe, you know, how much you make and your expenses and then where we end up with the net worth. The way you described it here and in your application was, I, Nicole, run this quite glamorous business, and I make a lot of money and I love nice dresses and traveling, and that's cool. I save for it. And, you know, it's great. Shane was. You called yourself a saver. You were kind of shocked that she might spend 10k a month and you have no fixed costs, so you save all of it. That's kind of interesting. I would expect maybe some different numbers here. They're kind of similar. Even though your financial situations are quite different.

[Shane]

Yes. And seeing the numbers out there and my, I guess, shock of how much money Nicole spends. Why should I be shocked? She looks like she's in a similar financial situation than I am, and she's doing everything that she wants to do. And that's great.

[Ramit Sethi]

That's interesting. Like, maybe, like your feelings are not correlated with how much money is in the bank. Yes, that's quite interesting. All right, let's go down to the income. Nicole, what's your GROSS Monthly income?

[Nicole]

$10,192.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, cool. And Shane?

[Shane]

9,949.

[Ramit Sethi]

Is that the new salary after your promotion?

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

What was it before price?

[Shane]

6. Around 6k.

[Ramit Sethi]

Whoa. So you just got like a 50% increase?

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Damn. All right, round of applause on that. That's great work. How's that feel?

[Shane]

It feels amazing. And it feels really great to be recognized and entrusted with all of the operations of this organization. It's wonderful.

[Ramit Sethi]

That's amazing. I love it. Both of you, well done. And shane, especially that 50% salary increase is. Is awesome. So combined, the two of you make $241,000 per year. By a show of hands. Who knew that number? What? Both of you? Really? Yeah.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[Shane]

Wow.

[Nicole]

We've been talking about it so much. So.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, another round of applause. This is fantastic. And what do you think of that number? 241k household income.

[Nicole]

That's amazing. Um, I. My only thought is the, like, hovering over. That's going to drop on my end.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah. All right. But like, we'll get to that.

[Nicole]

Today is great.

[Shane]

Okay. Shane, I. I think it's unbelievable, all things considered.

[Ramit Sethi]

Are y' all doing a prenup? No, no, no.

[Shane]

We talked about it. I think it was brought up by Nicole. She said, oh, we need to have a prenuptial agreement. And I gave her like, a side eye. I was like, what are you talking about? Isn't this conversation supposed to go the other way around?

[Ramit Sethi]

You know, and implying that men are supposed to bring it up for women?

[Shane]

Yeah, you know, it's just kind of like the old adage of, oh, you better get a prenup, you know?

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, but we're living in 2025. Your female partner makes more money than you. Yeah. So what's the problem?

[Shane]

I think it potentially invalidates our love and commitment to each other in marriage.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. One thing that I have often seen is that when. What we often think of as gender issues are often power issues. And when gender is disentangled from the situation, what you discover is that whoever is in power will act like the person who used to be in power. Case in point, what you just said,

Shane, is extremely interesting and extremely typical

of when a man brings up a prenup and his fiance or girlfriend goes, I don't want that. It feels unromantic, et cetera. And then everyone goes, oh, my God, this is like this asshole guy and this ignorant woman. And they.

And it's a gender thing, but actually

when we disentangle gender, because now we

have a lot of women earning more

than men as we see here, and a high earning woman goes, hey, I think we should get a prenup. And then you'll see the guy saying

exactly the same thing as she used to say, exactly, word for word. So it's not necessarily Gender related.

Of course, there's gender issues related to prenups and all kinds of money, but it's also power. Does everybody see that here?

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Whoa. Nicole, when he said, hey, you know, I'm not really into it, it kind of invalidates our love for each other. What was your response?

[Nicole]

I think I remember in multiple podcasts, you mentioning, you know, it wasn't a great experience for you and your partner at the time either. And I thought, like, okay, I could really push this, but I'm going to support Shane in this in that, like, we're going to be married in the Catholic Church. You get married for a very specific reason to someone, and it is forever. As even the business owner who, you know, let's say this doesn't work out

[Shane]

and

[Nicole]

I own a company that is successful. I. I know in my, like, heart of hearts he's not coming for it, and I didn't feel the need to, like, push back further. I had the conversation. I was. I felt really great about his response, and I felt fine. I feel great about moving on from it.

[Ramit Sethi]

Nicole mentioned that she asked about a prenup, and then Shane wasn't interested, and then she let it go. Okay, first of all, that's a huge mistake. There are certain questions where once you ask it, you can't just let it go. Like when I brought up a prenup with my now wife, Cassandra, I knew that by bringing it up, it was going to happen. It had to. I was not bringing it up casually, hey, what do you think about this? No, it was, hey, this is really important to me. Let me tell you why I'm nervous. Let me tell you why I'm bringing this up. Let me tell you what this means. And to Cassandra's credit, her response was, I wasn't expecting this, but I'm willing to learn she was open about it. And that changed everything for us. In our case, it did not stay easy. At first, it was fine. Then we got lawyers involved. All these numbers were going back and forth. Neither of us really felt understood. And after months of going back and forth, Cassandra said, like, this is not going well. We need to go see somebody. Went to see a therapist. That therapist really opened up our eyes to realize we saw money completely differently. There was trust, there was fear, there was pride. There was so much of what this prenup represented. Surprisingly, having these conversations, even when it got tough, brought us way closer together. We talked about money in a way we never would have had we not signed a prenup. That's one of the reasons that I love talking about it and destigmatizing this idea. I also want to recognize that it is unusual historically for a woman to bring up the idea of a prenup, but it's happening more and more. Of course it is. Many women are now earning more than men, particularly in urban areas. So I want you to start thinking about rethinking these gender norms. If one of you has a complex financial portfolio or you have rental properties or a business or whatever, you it makes a lot of sense to explore the idea of a prenup before you get married.

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All right. Your gross income, $241,000 a year combined. Wow, that's a lot. Fixed. What the hell? Your fixed costs are 36% combined. Okay. Just look at these numbers. Fourteen hundred dollars for your rent. Nicole, where do you live?

[Nicole]

We live on the east coast, coastal Connecticut. But I moved here during COVID and got a really great deal on an amazing apartment that we will be staying in for that because that's probably. It's at least 3,000 from my place now.

[Ramit Sethi]

Whoa.

[Nicole]

Just happened to move here at a really great time.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, well done. This actually explains a lot when you, you talk about buying a beautiful coat and things like that. Well, guess what? You can probably afford to do that when your individual fixed costs are 49% and that primarily traces back to having extremely cheap housing. Beautifully done. Let's keep going. Combined, you've got all the basic stuff. Nicole has $750 that runs through the business. Is that right, Nicole?

[Nicole]

So website marketing, text messaging, things that I need for the company. I put all my business expenses in that.

[Ramit Sethi]

You put your business income in here as well?

[Nicole]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

This kind of confusing. Okay, listen, as an entrepreneur, you have a business credit card, right? Oh, God. This actually explains everything. That, that 1.2 second pause actually explains everything. Did everybody catch that? I go, hey, you have a business credit card, right? She goes, I go off. Now I see why this is all messed up. Okay, Nicole, explain it to me.

[Nicole]

It's very organized. Can you put it back on the screen?

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, happily.

[Nicole]

Okay. Do you see how also I put dining out. That's. These are like, these are fixed costs because these are things that I have allotted for in my, in my expenses, in my savings accounts. That's what I didn't have, because I didn't. I don't have debt and I don't have a car payment. But these are, these are costs that I, These are things that I spend money on every month. So I think that the, the business expenses should be in there as fixed costs. I have to keep the website up. I. I have to run the text messaging. I have to pay for the marketing. Why are you looking at me like that?

[Shane]

I.

[Ramit Sethi]

This is fine. Because it doesn't materially change anything. Whether the $750 for your business expenses is here or where it properly should be, which is on your business account like your QuickBooks or whatever you use, that's really where it should be. It's not really material. If that number were $7,500 a month, then we would have to rip this thing up and, and redo it. But truthfully, it doesn't really change the numbers. Your business should have its own set of accounts. It should have its own business savings, checking, credit card and expense line. So all of those are counted somewhere else. You could have a business CSP if you want. This isn't really set up for the business. This is a consumer version. But you could do a QuickBooks or you can use my friend Mike McCallowitz book. There's a lot of ways you can track your business finances. But when it comes to the csp, this is your income and your personal money. Want to keep the business stuff out of it because that is truly separate. Okay. That's just conceptually how to think about it.

[Nicole]

Can I push back a little bit? Because even if my income personally of me traveling goes away, that expense still stays there. So. So that's why I would identify it as a fixed cost because my company is still going to be running.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, but if your income goes away or gets cut in half, you can deal with the expense separately on your business line. Like whether you keep it or not, it needs to be separate. And this is another reason you have an accountant. You're the. You're the accountant.

[Nicole]

I'm everything

[Ramit Sethi]

and. Okay, hold on. Why don't you have an accountant?

[Nicole]

My grandfather does my taxes. He's 91. It's great.

[Ramit Sethi]

Your accountant would tell you everything I'm telling you right now. They'd be like, get a business credit card. Don't commingle your funds. And on and on and on. So just get an accountant, okay? They'll sort this all out. It's not that big of a deal anyway. It's fine. Okay, all right, moving along. Groceries at $500. That's pretty low. That's cuz you eat out a lot. All right, fine. Clothes at 300 each. Each of you is buying $300 a month of Clothing. Is that right?

[Nicole]

Easily, yeah.

[Shane]

Recently? Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Phone. All right, Subscriptions. One of you is 50. That's Shane. Nicole's 497. What is that? Fitness?

[Nicole]

Multiple fitness, Peloton, Apple, Netflix, Hulu.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah. What's the most expensive one? Is it a Gym?

[Nicole]

Yep. Jim? 150.

[Ramit Sethi]

150. All right, fine. Look, truthfully, if you all have a combined fixed cost of 36%, I really have nothing to say. Do it. It's working. Do whatever you want. Great. Shane has a fixed cost of 18% and Nicole has 49%, which is great. Investments? 14%. So we have Nicole doing 9%. $883 a month. What is that? $883 going towards Nicole.

[Nicole]

That is a 401k now.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, and then Shane is contributing $512 a month and a thousand dollars a month. Shane, where's that investment money?

[Shane]

Going towards 401k and my brokerage account? Picking stocks a couple times a year.

[Ramit Sethi]

Like what?

[Shane]

Stocks researched. Blue chips, ETFs. I try to time the market, I guess, like when there's a dip, I'll just take, like, a bunch of money that I have in savings and strategize, like a bunch of stocks to purchase once a year, a couple times a year, and then I forget about it. Just see what happens.

[Ramit Sethi]

Can you forget about that strategy and use a better strategy that will make you hundreds of thousands of dollars more?

[Shane]

That's why I'm here.

[Ramit Sethi]

You shouldn't be doing what you're doing, but at least it's better than doing nothing. So in that way, like, you've got a handle on how you're investing. At least you know you have. You have this time. Every six months, every 12 months, you log in.

I appreciate all that.

Like, the mechanics are really good. The timing, the marketing is extremely detrimental to returns. It's like one of the worst possible

things you could do, but you could fix it.

So I'm not going to beat you up too much. Look, you're investing 1500 bucks a month. Couple minor tweaks, and you seem quite open to it. You could actually turn that into a lot of money.

[Shane]

That'd be great.

[Ramit Sethi]

Cool. All right. I respect it. So between the Two of you, 14% invested each month of net. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Do you all feel about that?

[Nicole]

Yeah, I feel good about that number. I don't do any of those projections. I have no idea what happens there. Like, what that looks like in 10 years or 15 or whatever. I haven't done any of that.

[Ramit Sethi]

So, yeah, who would want to know how much money we're going to end up with later in life? Who would, who would care about that?

[Shane]

I think we both got to a hundred thousand and we just don't know how to get from there to the next level.

[Ramit Sethi]

It's actually quite insightful what you're saying, Shane, because getting to 100k is very impressive in and of itself and it requires to have good underlying mechanics. What I mean by that is, you know, you can kind of brute force your way to saving 10K. You know, you might even be able to brute force your way to 25k in some cases, 100k if you have a high income, but if you don't actually know how it works works. It's kind of like getting lucky in Vegas. But like, if you don't understand how the game is played, you're gonna, you know, you're always gonna lose, but you're gonna lose big and you're gonna lose fast. With investing, you're like, well, what do we do now? And as an example, it's kind of a flag to me when you go like, oh, we don't project, we don't project. But actually like, if you don't project, if you don't have a sense of how much are we gonna have, is that enough? What kind of lifestyle are we working towards? Then all of this is just playing in the weeds. So I'm going to help you do that, I'm going to help you project so that we have a sense of where you're going. Okay.

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Your savings numbers are shocking. They're quite shocking. I'm gonna put them up on screen. 42% saved. And if we break it down, it's 47 for Shane and 38 for Nicole. Let's go through it on the vacations. Shane saves 150amonth. Nicole saves 450amonth. That actually tracks really well. Nicole likes to travel. Seems like perhaps a little bit more extravagantly. She's saving more. Makes perfect sense. Gifts. Shane is saving a thousand dollars a month for gifts. Nicole is saving a hundred dollars a month. Emergency fund, 250 and 150 for a total of 400. Just scrolling up to your savings. You have $265,000 in cash savings. You have pretty much way too much in savings. Do you all realize that?

[Shane]

Yeah, that's the, the scariest part about looking at all of this is we have a bunch of money sitting in. You know, mine's in a Credit union. Hers is in, you know, in an account and it's not even earning, you know, high interest.

[Ramit Sethi]

Nicole, you have 100k sitting in savings, but only 96k invested. Why?

[Nicole]

Probably also because I don't have the business separated, so I do need to have. I need to have a lot of money cash so that I can send the money out to pay people before I get.

[Ramit Sethi]

You need this sep. You see why you need to separated? Because that revolving amount that you need for cash flow, that's fair. Your business might be heavy on capital demands, but that's got to be over here in a business account and it cannot be here because you're just letting

all this cash just sit here.

Now, maybe you take 80k and send it to your business account, fine. But that 20k needs to be put to work. It needs to not just be sitting there. And that's what's happening because it's all commingled and sloppy. It's like a sloppy junk drawer. All right, moving along. Wedding, honeymoon, children's tuition, baby and a house. Speaking of junk drawers is all one savings category and you all are saving almost $5,000 a month for it. You know, minor stylistic thing. I don't like that it's all combined, but the fact that you're saving $5,000 a month is really impressive. Do you know like how much you are saving for a house?

[Shane]

Not right now. We were about $2,000 a month.

[Nicole]

Each?

[Shane]

Yeah, each.

[Ramit Sethi]

So $50,000 a year. And like how much do you need for a down payment?

[Shane]

I don't think we're going to be purchasing a home for at least five years, so I don't know.

[Nicole]

Okay, a house. 450. 500,000.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah. So you need like a hundred K. A hundred.

[Nicole]

Yeah, which we have. But then. Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

You know what I hear when the two of you describe your money? It's like some of the tactics are, are implemented well. You have very low fixed costs. You have money going to very specific, dedicated, named accounts. All that stuff is great. Your mechanics are pretty good, but there's no vision. There's no why you actually have a

vision between the two of you.

We're not going to buy a house for the next five years. We want to have kids. Like, like you have this stuff talked about, but it's not showing up properly

in the way that you work with numbers.

You have the ground level mechanics, which is also powerful, but you don't have that thing in the middle which is like, how much do we need?

How much are we saving? For how much are we going to

have when we retire? There's just this entire chasm of missing information. And so what I suspect happens is it allows you to just save, save, save, or have these random disagreements, but you don't actually have something specific that you're working towards. As an example, it's like, we need to save for the next 17 months

and then we're done. That would actually feel so good.

But right now it's just like, ah, we got to save more.

[Shane]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

How does that strike you?

[Shane]

I think you're spot on. I think for myself, I've always checked my account balances, which was very infrequent, probably like six times a year because I always knew it was increasing.

[Ramit Sethi]

I want to encourage you to think about it a little differently. What you just said is the equivalent of a baker saying, I think this

pie is going to be good because it's rising.

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Like, I don't think that's how bakers actually operate. Like, a good baker is going to understand quantity and sugar and whatever bakers do. What you're saying is like, as long as the number's going up, I'm good. But like, you all are operating at a different level now. You have hundreds of thousands of dollars about to get married. You're talking about a house and kids and all. You've got to actually understand more about how money works.

[Shane]

Yes, right, Absolutely.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right. And then the final thing I'm noticing here. Oh, God, I'm going to get roasted from all these freaking bakers online. All these bakers coming to me saying, pies don't rise. I'm telling everybody preemptively, don't comment to me about my lack of baking ability. I already know, Trust me. Every day I come on this podcast and I expose myself to a new corner of the Internet who I don't want to hear from, and I allow them to make fun of me, which is actually the worst. Why do I do this? All right, your guilt free spending is 8,8%. Is that true? Nicole indicates that her guilt free spending is $348 per month. Nicole.

[Nicole]

It is only because I've already baked everything into my fixed expenses. Like my fixed costs. Like dining out is in my fixed costs. It was one of the line items.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

[Nicole]

And my dresses are in there too, because it's part of my savings. So it's not accurate, but it is accurate.

[Shane]

Shane, what was my number?

[Ramit Sethi]

$1,013 per month.

[Shane]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[Ramit Sethi]

What do you spend that on fishing

[Shane]

gear, skiing gear, coffee, eating out, buying gifts. All right, that's about it.

[Ramit Sethi]

Out of curiosity, I'm going to try to do something. Let me show you. Nicole, I'm going to do this with you right here. Okay, so check this out. I'm taking your fixed costs, which are your discretionary thing. We're talking about your dining out for 500. Okay. I'm going to zero that out up here. And then clothes for 300. I'm a zero that out as well. That's 800. So now you're spending $1,148, which is 12%. That sounds more realistic. What that does is it actually provides us a slightly more accurate view. Your fixed costs are now 41%. Still super low. Actually lower than they used to be. Your Savings is at 38. That's high. That's really good. Investments at 9%. No, we're going to fix that. That's too low. Because why would you be saving 38% but only investing 9%? Doesn't make sense. Right? For young. Relatively young. You're 40. Is that right? Yeah. You got to be investing. We got to put that money to work. And then finally, you got a thousand bucks. I don't know. You talk about, like, living a cool life. Looks like you have a very nice shirt on. Yet you're only spending eleven hundred dollars a month on discretionary. I'm not sure I believe it.

[Shane]

I don't believe it either.

[Ramit Sethi]

Ramit, something's not adding up here. What do you think it is, Nicole?

[Nicole]

No, I think that's accurate. There is another tab on your CSP that has all my detailed expenses.

[Ramit Sethi]

Oh, let's look.

[Nicole]

And they're all categorized.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, let's take a look here. This is from this month. We have Pottery barton, gift of 42. Hotel, 381. Health membership for 65, a gift for 140, some health vitamins for $32.60. 21 bucks. Food at a movie, clothing for $475. Dinner for one. 18. Doesn't that seem like more than a thousand bucks already?

[Nicole]

Yes. The most important part is this. So I have total expenses of the entire month. I'm over what I've made this month by $2,498.

[Ramit Sethi]

Meaning you're in the red by $2,500.

[Nicole]

Right.

[Ramit Sethi]

There's several problems on this sheet. Can you spot them?

[Nicole]

That it's over the 1200 that I'm allotted that, too.

[Ramit Sethi]

So we know that your CSP number is not accurate. What Else, I don't.

[Nicole]

My business is in here.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes, that's a huge problem because we can't fix this because we can't even get accurate numbers because it's all jumbled together. This is why you've got to use a separate credit card. This is just one of many reasons. You don't want somebody suing you. And then they come after your personal money either. And, Shane, you're about to be on the hook for that as well. If you all combine your money, you need to have protection, separate accounts, liability, all that stuff. But you also just need to be able to look at your numbers and be like, oh, my God, am I up or down on my personal and my business? And right now you can't tell any of it. How is it that your CSP says1148 when it's obviously you're spending a lot more?

[Nicole]

I think it is still quite accurate because some months are so different, but I think it is really because my business is in there.

[Ramit Sethi]

It's possible, but I would say from looking at a lot of people's finances, I doubt it. I. I'm going to encourage you to go back, clean it up, strip out the business stuff, and do a more detailed analysis of your personal expenses for the last three to six months. And you'll be able to find some trends. I suspect it's probably double or triple. That's my guess, because nobody who shops and travels like you spends only $1,148 a month. No way. I mean, how much did your haircut cost? It looks like a very nice haircut.

[Nicole]

I can do this myself.

[Ramit Sethi]

You did it yourself?

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

No. Yeah. Wow. That was actually a very good response. That was a very good response. Hey, it's possible I'm wrong. Just find out the numbers and follow up.

[Nicole]

I'll. Yeah. Rather than defend myself, I'll find out the actual number. I think, you know, I don't have a set income every month. I can kind of play, play with it. And it is a bit of a game to, like, play.

[Shane]

I've always said that just because you write it all down in these spreadsheets doesn't mean that it's accurate or it's actually working.

[Ramit Sethi]

I think that's right. Let me explain why. So I have a lot of people who come on this show, and in your case, Nicole, you have an abundance of money, so. An abundance of money. Like you got 100k over here and 20k over there and. And you got all this stuff jumbled together. But if something goes wrong, you can just like float it, which I suspect is happening quite a bit. You may just not know it. I have couples that are in the opposite situation. Everything's jumbled together, but they don't realize they're two months away from running out of money. I remember a couple on this podcast, they were two months away from running out of money. It was a very difficult thing to realize.

But how do you get to that point?

You know, you have some bills due now. You have property tax due quarterly. It's just not all clear. And suddenly you can float it for six months, sometimes five years, and then

you hit a wall and it all collapses.

I don't think you're at risk of that right now. But what you are at risk for is not having enough money as you get older.

I see this pattern all the time when I talk to couples. One partner tracks every single dollar. They have custom categories in some color coded spreadsheet. They log into their money app every single day. And in heterosexual relationships, this person is almost always the woman. When I ask them, what do these numbers mean, the ones that you spend hours every week tracking? They have no idea. They track it all the time. But all of that work is aimed at exactly the wrong target. Take a look. Nicole is meticulous. She has savings accounts for specific goals. She knows exactly what she spent on her last vacation. She could tell me what she ate out, how much it cost last Tuesday. But what's the point? Do you know when you can retire? Do you know how much you can afford on a car or a house or a vacation? Please listen carefully. Your job with your money is not to jot numbers down. You are not a stenographer. Your job is to know your key numbers cold. Specifically, what do these numbers mean? Not what did I spend on takeout last month, but am I saving enough? Are my investments on track? Have we jointly defined what our rich life is? And then are we using our money to live it? Those are the meaningful questions you should be asking. Nicole has built something really impressive. But for all that careful tracking that she is doing, there's something crucial that she's been missing entirely. And right after this, we're going to find out what it is.

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I was at a dinner recently and my college friend mentioned somebody I had

not thought about in about 20 years.

I out of curiosity. When I got home I googled him

and within the first few results I

learned he was married, name of his three kids were out there and exactly

where he lived down to his street address. That took two seconds of searching.

Now if you want all that information out there, great. Most people do not which is why

I pay for and use a tool called Delete Me. I don't want data brokers or random people knowing my personal information and I

bet you don't either. Delete Me is a subscription service that

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off Shane, your debt is listed at $167,000 but $0 is going to debt every month Is that because you're paying your mortgage?

[Shane]

Yeah. So I purchased a condo that my mother lives in, so I'm covering the HOA fees and my student loans are in deferment right now while they figure out the whole income driven repayment plan.

[Ramit Sethi]

How much is your student loans?

[Shane]

Between 55 and 60. I qualify for the public Service loan forgiveness program. So If I make 120 months of qualifying payments, the rest of it is removed, forgiven. So I'm planning on doing that.

[Ramit Sethi]

Great. All right. That's a good answer. You know your numbers, you know what's going on, and you're waiting. Fantastic. You all have answered my questions about that. Now I want to ask you a question. As it currently stands, if we project out until. Shane, you are 65 years old, I

[Shane]

would say not enough, but around 600k.

[Ramit Sethi]

What's the number, Nicole, that you suggest you're going to have by 65?

[Nicole]

Oh, let's go with a million million bucks.

[Ramit Sethi]

Actually, the answer is $1.7 million as we project. How's that sound to both of you?

[Shane]

Great.

[Nicole]

It's not enough to live where we live.

[Ramit Sethi]

Really? Well, that, that's interesting because both of you, one says great, the other says not enough.

[Nicole]

With a child and the schooling that we'd like to have them go to and me not work. That's. You're projecting at the amount that I'm making?

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes, I am. Can I give you a little bit more context on that number?

[Shane]

Sure.

[Ramit Sethi]

Most people, when they hear a number that's 600k, 800k, 2, they don't really know what it means. Like, what does that mean? This sounds like a lot of money sitting around in my junk drawer. But actually, if we use something called a 4% rule, it's a very simple back of the napkin math. It allows US to withdraw 4% from the time we retire until we die and safely know that we're not going to run out of money. You would be able to safely withdraw 68, $808 per year in what's called safe withdrawal income for both of us. Yes.

[Shane]

It's not enough.

[Ramit Sethi]

It's not enough. Let's add in Social Security. Let's be conservative. I don't know, 50, 60k, 130k in safe withdrawal income. Again, I'm ballparking loosely.

[Shane]

Do y' all think not enough?

[Ramit Sethi]

What does it make you think when you hear this?

[Shane]

That we need to plan to invest or learn about investing now so that that number increases so the next time we do this, we know these numbers and we don't have to worry about it because we know that at retirement age, we're going to have X number, and we're going to both say, that's great.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, so you want to invest more. I agree. Conceptually. Nicole, what does it make you think

[Nicole]

that I need to decrease my spending significantly so I can invest more? I guess it's just. It makes me want to, like, change what I'm currently doing because it's not enough. It was enough for me as a single person, but it's not enough for us as a couple and a family.

[Ramit Sethi]

It's not enough. And actually, it's interesting to me that you jump right into, I need to cut my expenses. Like, can I just show you the numbers? Look at this. How much are you spending on your discretionary expenses per month?

[Nicole]

According to this, $1148.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, so you cut it by half, and you now have $500 extra a month to invest. I think that would be a good idea. Fine. Is that a lot?

[Nicole]

No.

[Ramit Sethi]

Where's a lot of money sitting around in your finances?

[Nicole]

In my savings account doing nothing.

[Ramit Sethi]

You have a hundred thousand dollars sitting in your savings account doing nothing. That's one thing right there. You could invest a lump sum of $50,000.

[Nicole]

So you want that to be in more investment instead of savings?

[Ramit Sethi]

I don't want anything.

I want you to think about what

is your rich life, what is important to you, and then potentially to reallocate money accordingly.

[Nicole]

Right. I'd like to reallocate it. Okay.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right.

My point is, you don't have to

jump to immediately, like, I gotta spend less on dresses. Maybe, maybe not. And actually, that's. That's not really gonna move the needle very much at all.

[Nicole]

Right.

[Ramit Sethi]

But more importantly, we can't decide what you need to change without actually having an honest accounting of what you're spending.

[Shane]

That's a real problem.

[Ramit Sethi]

Like, if we want to put 50k right now into investments, could we. I don't know. Do you need that money for business or is it purely for savings? And on and on. So that's why I want you to really know your business versus personal.

[Nicole]

Okay.

[Ramit Sethi]

I don't think that $1.7 million is enough. By the time you retire, I think it's possible you have less because your income might go down. Nicole. And do you plan to return to the workforce after you have a baby?

[Nicole]

Yes, but it'd probably be at least a year, if not longer.

[Ramit Sethi]

Right. Okay. All right. So we got to leave some room for that. Nicole, you mentioned that your business income varies from month to month. How much does it vary?

[Nicole]

So the business income is pretty consistent. That is, you know, from usually around 5,000 to 6,000amonth. I just hired a marketing team to do some more marketing and hopefully to bring in more business so that it can backend me moving out of the business.

[Shane]

Nice.

[Nicole]

I also started doula training, which will be something that I can do with the baby and closer to home. So I have been preparing for this. So what varies is really me. So, for example, October, I didn't work a single day. By work, I mean, I wasn't physically anywhere.

[Ramit Sethi]

How much do you charge as a nanny?

[Nicole]

$500 a day.

[Ramit Sethi]

What about when you travel?

[Nicole]

Still 500 a day.

[Ramit Sethi]

Let me. Let me ask a question just because I'm curious. So you're working with wealthy families, if they travel, so they'll hire you as a travel nanny, you go with them. What are some places that you've gone?

[Nicole]

Spain, Scotland, Ireland, London.

[Ramit Sethi]

Cool. What's the travel arrangements? Do you sit in economy with the kids or what?

[Nicole]

It depends on the family. Usually wherever they're sitting is where I'm sitting. There in first class. I'm in first class.

[Ramit Sethi]

Got it. So for a full time, one week trip, you'd be paid like 30, what do we say, 500 bucks times seven days. Right? All right, that's cool.

[Nicole]

Plus I'd have all expenses paid for. Right. Like all housing and food. Anything I do, anything I do with the kids is all taken care of.

[Ramit Sethi]

How did you get into this?

[Nicole]

I got into it actually to pay my student loan. So I worked full time and I babysat on the side. And then it got to the point where I could only be in one place at one time. People are giving my name to a lot of different people. And I started hiring my friends to babysit and kind of brokering it. So I would, you know, have the babysitter go to their house. The family would pay me, I would pay the babysitter. I saved up enough money to build a platform so that the families could just log into my website and make the bookings themselves. And then it made it streamlined everything so that it sends out a message to the sitters, which emails the client. And, you know, all that stuff is done after the fact.

[Ramit Sethi]

And this is in the northeast?

[Nicole]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

And this is for a babysitter?

[Nicole]

Yeah, this is like nights, weekends, villain nanny type of job.

[Ramit Sethi]

Pretty interesting. All right, cool. Thanks for walking us through that. That's a. I think a lot of people are curious about how does it work at the wealthy or ultra wealthy level for nannies, night nurses, babysitters, etc? It's a whole industry and very helpful to the families and wealthy families, particularly those who talk to each other and who live in certain geographical areas. They know this stuff, they talk about it. It's a very common thing. So I like to shine a light on this just as an example of what's possible. All right, so you make 5,000 from the agency that you run, and if you're working ballpark, you're making about 5,000amonth from that direct work, is that right? Correct. Okay, so the 5,000 is going to go away at some point. All right. Have you all calculated what happens when that money goes away? How does it affect your numbers?

[Shane]

We know that it's going away, but we haven't really discussed what that looks like.

[Ramit Sethi]

Why don't we just do it right now? So Nicole makes 10,000. Let's just say $10,000 gross and 9,500 net. What the. I also don't believe that. What about taxes?

[Nicole]

Right, So I kind of did that for taxes. That's another savings account.

[Ramit Sethi]

Do you know what you're netting every month? I'm going to guess it's like 6,000, 6,500, something like that, actually. How, how does this math work at all?

[Nicole]

6,500 is definitely more than that.

[Ramit Sethi]

It's more than that. All right, let's go to 7,000. If this is true, this is how much you're netting, then your fixed costs are actually 55%, which is not nearly as low as we thought. Your investments are at 13, your savings are at 50, 51, and you're actually spending more than you make every single month. Right. Is that possible?

[Shane]

Yes.

[Nicole]

Whoa.

[Ramit Sethi]

Shane comes out of left field.

[Nicole]

Yeah. Come in over there.

[Ramit Sethi]

Care to comment?

[Shane]

Yeah, you know, I, I, I'm with Nicole, and I see, you know, the amount of money that she spends, and I think that's where some of my apprehension comes in is, you know, when she's sending me, you know, pictures of houses on Zillow and schools that are kids who have yet to be born, how is this going to work with the amount of money that seems to be spent each month? And I think, you know, we joke with each other, like, after the wedding, we got to reel it in, like, reel it in and, But I, I hate putting, you know, guard rails on her spending.

[Ramit Sethi]

Let's not do that.

[Shane]

Okay?

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. Yes, have the wedding. But there's an entire worldview that I am starting to uncover regarding Your money that is concerning. It works because you have a big buffer of cash. That's pretty much the only reason this thing works. If you didn't have that big buffer of cash, Nicole, I suspect you would be in financial trouble. I mean, according to this, and I think this is understating it, I think that you might be spending more than you make every single month. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think

[Nicole]

I'm pretty much spending exactly as much as I'm making. Some months it's under, some months it's over.

[Ramit Sethi]

And what do you think about that?

[Nicole]

I think it works because I can always take another job.

[Ramit Sethi]

You have the mentality of a gig worker, right? A gig worker, a shift worker. They say things like, I can always just pick up another shift. You're paid very well, but the problem is at a certain point you can't do that. And you're. You're actually starting to think about that with the potential entry of a baby. So if you're spending what you make right now, what do you do when your income drops by half and everything needs to drop?

[Nicole]

I have. That's what I was having the conversation with Shane. Like, I don't know if I can contribute $2900 into our savings account for a house and all that when I'm not making as much as I'm making now.

[Ramit Sethi]

But. But also, like, why, why is it even 2900?

[Shane]

I can, I can answer that question. So when I first met Nicole, she was house shopping and so she was looking at houses and she told me how much her rent was. So I anticipated that she could afford to have about a $4,000 mortgage per month because of how much the houses cost that she was looking at. And I said it'd probably beneficial as things started to get serious for us, that you have, you know, some disposable income of having at least 2,000 additional dollars, you know, considering what your rent is. So why don't we. Why don't we put that into a high interest savings account? I'll match it and we'll just keep doing that. So when we do want to buy a house, we have, you know, like you said, $100,000 to put down, and we're not even sweating that money. That's where that number came from.

[Ramit Sethi]

That's a, that's a reasonable answer. It shows some foresight. I appreciate that. To me, it's, it's a good start. It's missing a few things. Like you told me, you don't plan to buy a house. For five years, Potentially longer. What do you think?

[Shane]

I guess it depends.

[Nicole]

Yeah, it's not high priority for me.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, so then let me. Let me entertain a guess here. I'm going to guess that neither of you said, hey, if we're not planning to buy a house in at least five years, maybe seven, maybe eight, should we consider just investing the money? I'm willing to bet nobody said that.

[Shane]

Oh, I've said it.

[Ramit Sethi]

You said it.

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Wait, you said it. And then what was the response? I'm very shocked. Pleasantly shocked. What was the response?

[Shane]

Let's wait till we do Ramit's show and see what he has to say about this.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay.

[Shane]

No pressure.

[Ramit Sethi]

Why are all your answers kind of good? Kind of good? All right, I got. I got a few more questions for you, Nicole. You track all of your spending. Like, you manually put it in, manually categorize. What does it get you?

[Nicole]

It helps me understand, like, how much more I'm spending than I'm making or how much less, like, where I'm at.

[Ramit Sethi]

And then what do you do with that information?

[Nicole]

I adjust. Like, I knew, for example, in October that I wasn't going to be working personally, so I don't spend as much. And I know that August, I work every single day so I can, like, house that. Because I don't spend anything either because all my expenses are paid for. I work November. I didn't work that many days. So I can kind of see where I'm at at the end of each month. Like, it doesn't feel like a burden to me. It doesn't stress me out. I just like it.

[Ramit Sethi]

60 seconds of you explaining all this meticulous information that you. And then at the end, you go, I don't know. I just like it. I actually think it's the last thing you said. I think you like it. I think it feels comforting. I think it feels like control. What if you didn't do it?

[Nicole]

I don't know. I probably now, at this point, I know how much I spend every month. Like, either I spent $500 on a couple of skirts at Bloomingdale's, or I spend $500 up for here. Like, it all ends up, like, net net being about the same number every month.

[Ramit Sethi]

Let's assume that's true. That's right now with you making $10,000 a month gross. What happens when you make $5,000 a month gross? Your margins become a lot tighter.

[Nicole]

Right?

[Ramit Sethi]

This is why when people make $35,000 a year, they actually do need to track down to the line item because they don't have the margin that somebody making 100k, 150, 200k has. That's quite striking, I think. I'm not trying to pick on Nicole,

but this is what happens when your conscious spending plan is sloppy. We started this review thinking that their fixed costs were low. That wasn't true. And just entering net income in the wrong spot threw everything off. Once that happens on the csp, all all the downstream numbers are wrong. Now, I want to point out that I see a lot of comments online from people getting frustrated when couples come on this show and they have an incorrect csp. People want my team to screen them ahead of time and to work it over with them. We shouldn't get messy CSPs. No, I totally disagree. I want to show you reality, guys. This is how most people track their money. They don't even use a csp.

They.

And when they do, it's wrong. That is not a weakness of the csp. There is no magical solution that will make the first time you track your money perfectly accurate. This takes work. It's complex. And the point of this podcast is to show you the journey that people go through to live their rich lives. Like, if I want to show you how somebody lives, I want to go into their house with a camera and see all these shoes are all over the place. There's a freaking spoon in the bathroom sink. Why? I want to embrace the messiness, because that's real. I don't want to tidy things up for you. Nicole has been able to operate like this because she has cash sitting around. That masks a lot of these weaknesses. But in fact, the way that she set things up makes it almost impossible to see what's really going on. Many of you have the same problem because you have money flowing in, all these weird, different accounts. It's not clear what's going on. You're pulling from your savings randomly. And I see this especially happening with business owners. They move money around in mix accounts, and as long as they have enough in the checking account, they think it's fine. But that only works if you're tracking random numbers and ignoring these big real questions, like, are we saving enough? Can we retire? So next, I want to understand where these habits are coming from, because they did not magically appear. They were systematically built, I suspect, from a young age. So I want to find out where that started.

Can I understand a little bit more about how you both grew up with money? Shane, what do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?

[Shane]

My dad always carried a knot of money in his pocket and he would, I remember specifically he took out like $100bill and he said, you see this Shane? This is just paper. They'll make more and you can go get more, so don't worry about it. And my mother was the saver.

[Ramit Sethi]

So when he said they make more of it, what did he mean by that?

[Shane]

Don't let it control you. You know, don't, don't worry about it. If you get it, spend it, enjoy life.

[Ramit Sethi]

What did he do for a living?

[Shane]

He was a bookmaker before online gambling. You know, on the east coast you needed a bookie to place bets. That was my dad.

[Ramit Sethi]

Oh, wow.

[Shane]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. How dumb am I?

I was like, oh, he was quite a literary figure. He was doing book binding.

Yo, Indian people don't grow up knowing what a bookie is, especially not on the west coast. Wow. Okay, that explains it. Okay. So he said don't let it control you. You can just make more. Which in his industry I can see why he said it.

[Shane]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

What was his financial situation as he got older?

[Shane]

Not great. Because in that line of work, you know, it's all cash based. So there was no investing, I guess much to the tune of, you know, how Nicole is a high end gig worker. My dad always knew that people were going to continue to bet and the house would always win. And as long as people continued to bet, he would always get his 10%. So that's how it works.

[Ramit Sethi]

That's very interesting. Cash workers often not paying attention to tomorrow because today is quite lucrative and the structure of the business is just set up to focus on today. Okay. And your mom you mentioned was a saver?

[Shane]

Yeah, she was. I mean my, my dad passed away dead even. He broke even in life financially, you know, it didn't leave me anything. And my mother was always anticipating a spot where the family would need money. And I think it was typical of if we wanted something, my mother would, you know, go to her stash and pull out money so that we could do that. So that was the emergency fund. You know, I know my dad would flip my mom a couple hundred like every week and say put this away. And then over the course of years like that's how it worked, you know.

[Ramit Sethi]

Did she work?

[Shane]

My mother always had like a side hustle of house cleaning business. She used to babysit kids at the house. She always worked though. She would do that or she would have a part time job.

[Ramit Sethi]

What do you think you learned about money when you reflect back on your mom and dad.

[Shane]

My parents spent their money on me. They sent me to a private Catholic school. So I was around individuals that had money, had nice things, and got to learn how that happened. Right. Like, what they lacked was investing for their Future.

[Ramit Sethi]

You have $143,500 invested. Where is that money invested?

[Shane]

It's invested in 401k, and I have a brokerage account.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. And, like, within those accounts, what investments have you chosen?

[Shane]

Basically, stocks. I have a couple of Vanguard ETFs.

[Ramit Sethi]

Would you say your dad was a gambler?

[Shane]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ramit Sethi]

Do you have any of that gambling instinct in you or gambling tendency in you?

[Shane]

No.

[Ramit Sethi]

No. Wow.

[Shane]

Well, I saw the. You know, my father was the house, right. So he was able to teach me. You know, if we went to a casino, he'd say, do you see this property? Do you think that they got all this money to make this place how it is by giving all their money away? You know, I know that my dad never lost when he was a bookmaker, right? Like, he just went and picked up all the money, did the simple math, and then put the money in, you know, his jewelry box or whatever. So. So I was taught never to put a dollar into a slot machine or. Or play a table game. There are no sure things.

[Ramit Sethi]

I love the idea of parents teaching their kids the ins and outs of their wisdom and their profession. I used to have a personal trainer who had kids, and he would post videos of his little kids kicking a ball. And I thought to myself, like, he was an athlete and his kids are going to be athletes. And watching that transmission of tacit knowledge was just really special. It was really cool because, you know, my parents put us in sports and stuff, but they were not athletes. It wasn't something that they just did naturally, but they did it with academics. It's no surprise that my siblings and I turned out the way we did. We were in the same way that my trainer taught his kids day in and day out. Same way your dad taught you about how bookies and gambling actually works in the house is the same way that it worked for us.

[Shane]

Yeah, it was special.

[Ramit Sethi]

Nicole, what do you remember about your family saying about money when you were growing up?

[Nicole]

My mother controls most of the finances in the household, so my dad would have to, like, give my mom the receipts of, like, if he took cash out of the atm. And her saying was always, like, we don't have money for that. And so I got a job when I was 14 because I got a hundred dollars a year to buy school supplies. Or clothes that I wanted, and I wanted something else beyond that. And she's like, we don't have money for that. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna go get a job because I want that thing, right? And then, you know, that's kind of how I've always worked. My grandfather, I would say, is probably the most influential person in my life in terms of finances. So he worked a full time job and then he ran a tax service. So he always kind of had a side hustle and he retired. He's still alive.

[Ramit Sethi]

Your grandfather ran a tax service and you don't have an accountant?

[Nicole]

He's my accountant, but now he's 91, so I really need to.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yo, this 91 year old is watching this right now. And he's like, I told my granddaughter,

separate accounts, no commingling.

You're right, grandpa. Okay, go on.

[Nicole]

Yeah, so he worked a full time job and did tax on the side, and he retired at 88. Like, he was doing taxes until, like, just a few years ago.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, that's pretty inspirational.

[Nicole]

He really, like, lived, like, the luxurious life that I thought. Like, my mom was very, like, everything was very tight. The thing I really took away from my parents would be like, we saved to buy the thing. Like, that was really important. And my grandfather, to me was like, we just buy and, like, spend. But he also had kind of the money for it. But another, like, awakening to me is now he's in his 90s, he wants to stay at home, and it's really expensive to stay at home with, like, the care that he and my grandmother need. I'm looking at how much it's costing him, and I'm like, wow, I don't know if I'm gonna have that much, you know, at 91.

[Ramit Sethi]

Hey, Nicole, you're not gonna have that much, right? Unless you change.

[Nicole]

And so I'm kind of in, like a panic mode of like, oh, my gosh, I'm watching this man who did everything right, you know, have enough, but it's getting harder for him.

[Ramit Sethi]

What messages did you take away from the way your parents raised you with money and your experience with your grandpa?

[Nicole]

I don't know.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, Can I ask a couple of probing questions?

[Nicole]

Sure.

[Ramit Sethi]

Do you bring the desire to live a luxurious life like your grandpa?

[Nicole]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. Do you bring the desire to want to be in control of money?

[Nicole]

Yes, but I'd like to not.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, fair enough. Do you bring the feeling of scarcity with money to this relationship?

[Nicole]

I don't think so.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay.

[Nicole]

I really disliked that comment that my mom would always say of we don't have money for that, I never wanted to feel that, which is why I brought that, like, gig mentality. Like, I had a full time job and I started this babysitting agency because I was like, I want to have enough to not have to, like, say no to something that I want to do.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. Quite interesting. What do you both make of your upbringings? And I'd like to ask you to assess the others. Like Shane, what do you notice about Nicole's upbringing with money and her relationship with money today? And then, Nicole, I'd like you to ask the same thing about Shane.

[Shane]

Yeah, I believe that what she's just described as her upbringing and what she's shared with me perfectly personifies, you know, her relationship to money. And what she does bring into this relationship. I'm gaining a better understanding or have gained a better understanding of why she is the way she is. I really value and appreciate how she approaches money and, you know, it really doesn't seem to affect her. And I'm understanding more of, you know, it's like, it doesn't matter now because I'll just make more.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes. Okay. Thank you, Nicole.

[Nicole]

I think more of his, like, mother side shows up in our relationship of like, not wanting to spend money and like, wanting to save it and like, keep it, rather than his dad's side of like, spending in.

[Ramit Sethi]

How would you describe in a word or two your identity as a couple as it relates to money?

[Nicole]

I think it's very confused in the way that my business, asset and personal are messy.

[Ramit Sethi]

I agree. Beautiful description. That's really apt. Shane.

[Shane]

Yeah. And unsettling and unplanned.

[Ramit Sethi]

Nice. All of these are great. I really appreciate them. As I always say, in order to live a rich life, you have to be honest with yourself and honest with the people around you. I think those were extremely descriptive, accurate words. The good news is we could fix all that. But I feel unsettled and confused when I look at the numbers. And if I feel that way, I know that you feel that way. And just getting through more things like getting married, going through the new year, that's not going to solve any of this. Whether you have the wedding 11 days from now or five years from now, these underlying issues are things that need to be examined. They need to be interrogated, they need to be jointly improved. Okay. So in order to do that, I want to shift a little bit to the future. So, Nicole, we started this conversation about money, talking about your future rich life with a New child, not aligning with your current rich life. What do you say about creating a new rich life vision for the two of you?

[Nicole]

That sounds great.

[Ramit Sethi]

Shane, what do you say?

[Shane]

I love that.

[Ramit Sethi]

Beautiful. So tell me if we had a blank page, which we do. What travel, what experiences, what moments as newlyweds, as potential parents are important to you in your rich life?

[Shane]

Say private education for our children. Boat. Ocean house on the coast. Travel. That's. That would sum it up.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. Nicole?

[Nicole]

Yes. Private education is very important to me as well. And travel. Travel is important.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay. What else?

[Nicole]

I'd like to just adjust that dining out number to be at home of like eating at home.

[Ramit Sethi]

Like you want to have dinners together more often.

[Nicole]

Right. At home.

[Ramit Sethi]

Great. Can I make an observation? Private education, a boat, a house on the coast, travel. If you're all living on the east coast, this is a very expensive lifestyle. Do you know how much it would cost to make this happen?

[Shane]

Millions a year?

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, maybe a million. You could. So I'm not here trying to squash any rich life dreams. I'm just trying to understand how much of this is like a dream versus a vision. A rich life vision is something that we can reasonably achieve.

[Nicole]

What do you think my priority of a house on the coast is? Much lower.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay.

[Nicole]

The other things are much more important.

[Ramit Sethi]

Private education, 60k a year.

[Nicole]

So it's not as bad here.

[Shane]

About half that.

[Nicole]

About half that.

[Ramit Sethi]

30k a year. All right. And then you already have a boat.

[Nicole]

He'd like. He'd like a larger boat.

[Ramit Sethi]

You want a bigger boat?

[Shane]

I do.

[Ramit Sethi]

How. How much is a new bigger boat cost?

[Shane]

I could probably find one for about $50,000.

[Ramit Sethi]

Okay, great. 50K. And then the travel. How much per year?

[Nicole]

So currently I spend about 7, 500 a year. I like to have that number cut in half for smaller experiences.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right.

[Shane]

Another thing that's really important to me is I don't want Nicole to have to go into these years of austerity. I want her to continue to live how she's lived and not worry about like what we're worrying about or what she's worrying about. Because I think making the adjustment backwards is a lot difficult. More difficult to. Making the adjustment forward. Right.

[Ramit Sethi]

I agree. Adjusting downward is very difficult. How do you do it though? If you have one partner who's the higher earner, whose income is just cut in half and expenses have gone up significantly up. How do you make that work?

[Shane]

I guess we have to do what we have to do for. Through planning and being, you know, and going through in this examination and being more organized to have a plan to return to this. But in the addition of a child, you know, I don't think it's possible to get back to this. And I'm worried that, you know, are. Nicole, are you going to be happy when you can't live this lifestyle, you know, two years from now? Is it going to affect you?

[Nicole]

I am going to be quite happy to do that. Like, yes. Do I love having the $500 dress or the shirt? Yes. But it's like the family and a husband was, like, far more important to me than I'm happy to do those things. Like, really, I'm not going to feel resentment. I want to do it. That's more important to me.

[Ramit Sethi]

Nicole, you mentioned that you're nervous about buying a house. Why is that?

[Nicole]

I think I'd rather have the lifestyle of being flexible and, like, travel and doing private school and staying home rather than feeling this burden of a house.

[Ramit Sethi]

Shane, how do you feel about that?

[Shane]

I don't care where I live. I really don't.

[Ramit Sethi]

That's cool that you both are on the same page. And I actually agree. Without knowing details of where you live, especially with the rent you have, it's like, oh, my God, you're saving so much every single month. Incredible. But can I make a gentle suggestion? And that is to Nicole. You got to stop sending those Zillow links.

[Shane]

I've been telling her this.

[Ramit Sethi]

Sometimes when we are trying to make a change with our money, we are doing things that are habitual. We're sending out Zillow links because you love looking at them. And it's just like, oh, look at this one. Look at that.

[Nicole]

But.

[Ramit Sethi]

But it's actually sending really mixed messages to your partner. So my gentle request would be, don't do it. Don't send it anymore. And more importantly, find something else to occupy your time, because you cannot send mixed messages to your partner. But more importantly, you cannot send mixed messages to yourself. How do you feel about that?

[Nicole]

That feels very fair.

[Ramit Sethi]

Love it.

Great.

Okay, can we take a look at the CSP then? Let's see what kind of changes we might be able to make. So looking here, we have some confusing things still on the csp. I want to try to make them clearer right now so that we can actually make some decisions. So Shane's income is going to stay roughly the same. He's just at about $10,000 a month. Great. Nicole's income, her gross income currently is about 10,000, with a net income of 7,000.

I would like to change that to

see what happens so we can simulate a 50 drop in income. Okay, so we're gonna take that down to 5,000. Is that fair, Nicole?

[Nicole]

Okay.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right. And then what is our net going to be?

[Nicole]

3,500?

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, 35, maybe a little bit more. Let's say 3, 800-ballpark. All right. Whoa. Watch what just happened. So right now, your fixed costs. If we're just doing. Nicole, you're now spending more than you make every month, but you're moving in together, which is a financial benefit because it's combining two incomes without raising your rent. Your fixed costs are still at 47% joint. That's quite amazing.

[Shane]

Is it?

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes. Let me tell you why. Typically, the fixed cost number, I encourage people to keep it between 50 and 60%, and that's hard to do, especially these days because housing is so expensive.

So there's a lot of people I

talk to who are at 62, 64, sometimes 73%, which is why they start

to feel stressed out about money. But you all are not even close to 60%.

And do you know why that is? It's because of this. It's your housing I want to show you. Just to simulate the difference, let's say you all got a new place. Okay. How much would a new place cost you?

[Nicole]

It would be like 4,000amonth.

[Ramit Sethi]

4,000. Shane, you. You agree with that?

[Shane]

I was going to say 36.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, 3600. Right away. Your fixed cost jumped to over 60% right away. So you can see that that is a key driver of affordability for you. The fact that you have this extremely inexpensive housing option. Groceries. It probably needs to go up a bit. Probably not a huge amount. What do you say?

[Nicole]

I would say that needs to probably go to a thousand. With all of us eating at home.

[Ramit Sethi]

I agree. It needs to go to a thousand. Shall we make the change?

[Shane]

Sure.

[Ramit Sethi]

We got a thousand bucks. You're now at 67% on your fixed costs. What else? Certain gadgets and whatever you're going to get for the baby that needs to be included here. We certainly need to include diapers. We need to include whatever else. How much you want to put for that?

[Nicole]

800.

[Ramit Sethi]

800. Okay, cool. Yeah, fair. Let's put 800. Watch. What's this number up here? 74%. What do you notice so far?

[Shane]

If we were living like most other people live, we would be really stressing about money. But we have.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah.

Yes. This is what money is for. This is what planning is for. Planning is not about how Much did

I spend last month on a dress? That's irrelevant. I mean, it's nice to know. Yeah. You should track it, I guess, to some extent.

But we're talking about life changes.

This affects everything.

Should I leave my job and cut 50%? Should we wait three months to have a baby?

Do we need to move and upgrade

into a different apartment or a house or whatever? Do you see how big of an impact this makes? It's like a crystal ball into your future. Okay, I agree with what you said. You would be stressed out.

Let's not do that. Shall we reduce some stuff?

[Shane]

Yes, please.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah. Let's take your rent back down to 1895.

[Shane]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right. And then your groceries. We're going to have to keep them at a thousand. All right, what else did we change? Oh, the 800 bucks. Let's zero that out. So we're down to 51. Not bad. Not bad. You have margin to play with, because this is 51%, and I typically recommend people keep this number to 50 to 60%. You have 9% margin to play with, conceptually. Where would you put that 9% investment? Yes, I agree. Exactly. We're in our 40s. We realize that we don't want to retire with $1.7 million. We want more. So, yes, I would take that roughly 9%, and I would invest it. Investments. We're at 22%, which is great. You could probably push it up a little bit, but we'll see. Savings are at 64%. No way. That's way too high. Because money that is saved is not actually growing. Right. We can't be saving $7,000 a month. That's insane. We need to be putting more of that money to work. So what do you want to do?

[Shane]

I would like to invest at least 5,000 of that a month.

[Ramit Sethi]

You want to invest 5,000 out of the 7,000?

[Shane]

Okay, yeah, if we can afford it.

[Ramit Sethi]

Well, we'll find out. Nicole, what do you say?

[Nicole]

I'd probably feel better about four.

[Ramit Sethi]

Y' all are just, like, picking random numbers out of the air.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

I suspect this happens, like, more than right now. Should it be four or five thousand? Nobody really knows. What matters is, number one, just general proportions.

What should we be putting more money

towards or less money towards? When I'm looking at savings, I'm thinking to myself, hmm, do we need $600 a month saved for vacations? Which would be, you know, roughly 8,000 bucks a year.

[Nicole]

We only need about. Well, I said 3,500, because that is the few vacations that I wanted a year. So.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah. So let's round up because I think. I don't want to have you feeling totally restricted, but let's put 400 bucks a month, which would be $5,000 a year. It's nice to have a little buffer. So I just created some extra margin or extra cash flow for you. That money is flowing down here. Okay. To your guilt free spending. But we need to make some adjustments right now because it's in the negative. Do we need $1,100 a month for gifts?

[Shane]

No. Probably 200.

[Ramit Sethi]

200. Great. Do we need 400 bucks a month for an emergency fund? Yes, we do. How much do we have in an emergency fund right now? Look up here.

[Nicole]

All right. Okay, okay, okay.

[Ramit Sethi]

Only a small $265,000. You need an emergency fund. You don't need to be saving $400 a month when you already have $265,000. Okay.

It makes no sense.

You have filled up your emergency fund, and beyond that, $400 a month would be better allocated where investing. Probably investing. That's how we think about it. So we eliminate the emergency fund because we already have that. Your savings is still at 50%. Why? Oh, because you're saving $44,900 a month for all of this other stuff. I like that you're saving for a baby, by the way. I wish more parents did this. There are going to be unexpected expenses that come up. It's great to get in the habit of saving, but I think you already nailed it up above. You're saving 800 bucks somewhere.

[Nicole]

We didn't. It's not in there anymore.

[Ramit Sethi]

Oh, let's fix it out. Is 800 enough like we want to make sure? I want you to be comfortable.

[Shane]

I would be comfortable with 1,200amonth.

[Ramit Sethi]

Let's just see how this affects everything. Okay. Your fixed costs are now at 62%. So it's not like y' all are just saving a bunch of money. We actually need to act like any other couple. Meaning you need to be quite thoughtful about what you're doing with your money.

You can be a little less thoughtful

when your fixed costs are freaking 38% or.

Or 51%.

But at 62%, that's it. You're actually over the recommendation. And that's okay because don't stress out young parents.

I always give them a little bit of extra grace.

You might not be able to save as much as usual as invest as much as usual for a. For a time period. But don't Stress out. It's okay. That's what money is for, for these moments in time. Okay. Your investments are at 22%. Your savings are still at 50%. That's insane.

[Nicole]

Yeah, we can change mine to a thousand.

[Ramit Sethi]

That's $1,000 a month or $12,000 a year. Okay. And Shane?

[Shane]

Yeah. You can dial mine down to a thousand as well.

[Ramit Sethi]

24%. What is this $2,000 a month going towards?

[Nicole]

That's for my sister's children.

[Ramit Sethi]

Ah, okay. All right.

[Nicole]

Yeah, it's a non negotiable right now.

[Ramit Sethi]

Non negotiable. Okay, gotcha. And Shane, what's your thousand dollars going towards?

[Shane]

I don't know what it's going into.

[Ramit Sethi]

Great answer. Yeah, I love the honesty. What do we need to be saving for?

[Nicole]

Yeah, we still do need to save for the tuition.

[Shane]

Yeah, I guess I'd be saving for our child's tuition. That's. I think that's very legitimate.

[Ramit Sethi]

What age do you start paying this tuition?

[Nicole]

Eight.

[Ramit Sethi]

Oh, okay. So you don't need this money for eight years. I don't know what the rules are for saving or using a tax advantaged account for a child for private school tuition. I'm not aware of that. But you should definitely look into that. Okay. Things like 529, etc. But in addition, just conceptually, if I knew I wouldn't have to pay tuition for eight years, I would be investing that money because I don't want to sitting around for eight years earning minimal interest, perhaps losing to inflation.

I want that money growing.

And eight years is a relatively long time horizon. So something to think about. It's exactly the same decision my wife and I made about our money for a down payment for a house. We're like, do we want to buy a house anytime in the next decade? We're like, no. So we just invested the money, boom, let it grow, and that allows us to buy a bigger house or a higher down payment or whatever. That's what I would suggest. So technically, I take that thousand dollars and I put it towards investments.

[Shane]

Watch.

[Ramit Sethi]

I'm going to call this tuition. And I save $1,000 here. Whoa. Now I really, really like this. Because look at these numbers. They tell a story. The story is that you are investing

31%, which is extremely high, and you

are saving 15%, which is pretty high. Do you all see that?

[Shane]

Yes. Okay.

[Ramit Sethi]

Now there's only one problem. You don't have enough money to do all this stuff. And the reason I can tell that is if you look down here guilt free Spending, you're at a negative $389. You actually need positive. Like, it would make no sense for the two of you to be making $179,000 and not be able to go out to a coffee. So we were overspending somewhere. What do you think?

[Shane]

Investing?

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, I think you probably are investing too much. As it stands, you are investing $35,000 a year.

[Shane]

So I guess we need to pick the number that we're comfortable with retiring at and our annual income and then die and work backwards.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes, working backwards is great. And we should do that, actually. Should we just do that right now?

[Shane]

That would be really great.

[Ramit Sethi]

Let's use my investment calculator. Here we are. Let's plug in your numbers. Here's the number you are starting with today. $239,900. How many years until the oldest person is 65?

[Nicole]

17.

[Ramit Sethi]

So what is the number you see on screen right now?

[Shane]

2.1 million.

[Ramit Sethi]

2.1 million. What we do is we take that number and multiply it by 0.04, which gives us about $84,000 a year in safe withdrawal. Again, this is real back of the napkin, but it gives us a rough sense of the numbers. What do you all think about that?

[Shane]

Too low.

[Ramit Sethi]

Too low. Yeah, I agree, Nicole.

[Nicole]

Too low, but definitely closer than where we were.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah. As an example, just consider that the income you're working with in your CSP is $179,000. Do you want to go to $84,000 in retirement?

[Nicole]

Right.

[Ramit Sethi]

I wouldn't.

[Shane]

No, thanks.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, exactly. No, thanks. Like, I'm not going to let that happen. So what are our other options?

[Shane]

Win the lottery?

[Ramit Sethi]

Not that option. Oh, spoken like the son of a bookie. Not that option.

[Shane]

Invest more.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes. How, though?

[Shane]

Get a raise.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, I think that's right on. Similar to that. Get a raise, Nicole.

[Nicole]

I hired a marketing company for the agency in hopes that, you know, there's really unlimited potential in my business.

[Ramit Sethi]

So grow your business and grow your income. Yes. Can I throw some out, please? Nicole could keep working. You could not send your kid to private school. Both of you could start a side business.

You could take the hundreds of thousands

of dollars you have in savings and invest some of it.

[Shane]

Yeah, I want to invest a hundred thousand, fifty thousand each. Just start.

[Ramit Sethi]

You want to see what the effect of that is?

[Shane]

Yes, please.

[Ramit Sethi]

All right, let's take a look. Here we are back at the calculator. Same numbers. Right now it says you're starting with $239,000. Let's say we add $50,000 to it. So instead of 239, it's 289. Look at the number at the bottom. From 2.1 million to 2.2 million, it's nothing. It's not very meaningful. Do you know why it's not that meaningful? Because you're only investing for 17 years.

[Shane]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

You don't have enough time for it to compound. So let's add a little bit more. It was 239. Let's make it 339. Oh, we're at 2.4 million. Okay. You know what really moves the needle is the time you have to remember. How old are each of you?

[Shane]

I'm 48.

[Nicole]

I'm 40.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah. All right. So there you go. So because we're talking about a limited amount of time for this to compound, time is really your friend. So let's just let me show you what happens when instead of 17 years, let's go up by one year at a time. Okay. 18 years makes it 2.6 million. Notice how quickly it's growing now.

[Shane]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

Let's make it 19 years. 2.8 million. You're making more from your investments per year than your salary. 20 years, we're at 3.1. Just to make the point. 25 years, you're at $4.6 million.

[Shane]

So by adding eight years, it more than doubles.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes.

[Shane]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

What.

What does this tell you?

[Nicole]

We need to at least put that 100,000 in.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yes. What does it tell you about your behavior with money until now?

[Nicole]

It's not responsible for the retirement we're trying to have.

[Ramit Sethi]

It's cost you a lot, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars to let the money sit in a savings account. All of this tracking of, like, random categorization isn't worth 12 months of this compounding.

[Shane]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

In other words, you better start investing aggressively today. That's the takeaway. I would have thoughts.

[Shane]

I 100% agree with you.

[Ramit Sethi]

Cool. Nicole.

[Nicole]

I have. Yeah. And I have at least 25 years.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, you have a lot of time. I don't think you're going to run out of money. That's not the problem here. The question is, are you going to live the kind of lifestyle that you want? Okay. And I think it's actually really cool that you both were pretty clear about what are non negotiables to you, including private school, et cetera. And I think it's pretty cool that you are like, oh, we can stay in our place for a while and save some money there. What I'm trying to do is help you connect all the pieces together so that you can make decisions for your lifestyle right now and for retirement and travel and those kinds of things. What changes do you think you're going to make?

[Nicole]

Can you go back to the csp? Because I think as of right now, I still have no dollars.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

To have fun with.

[Ramit Sethi]

There definitely needs to be something there. Take a look. You're in the negative for guilt free spending. Not tenable.

[Nicole]

And this is at least a year down the road, but yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

What do you want to do?

[Nicole]

Well, we're going to invest the additional hundred thousand. I want it to be aggressive for the next two years because I'll be able to work while I'm pregnant.

[Ramit Sethi]

If it were me, what I would do is I would keep a year's worth of emergency fund. And how do I calculate that? Easy. I go down to fixed costs. It's $6,800. So I would multiply that by 12. That's 82,000 bucks. I would keep $82,000 in an emergency fund and the rest of it I would invest because that money now is going to be very, very powerful to me down the road. Right now it's literally just sitting there doing nothing. Now, if you want to leave a little bit extra, you want to leave an extra 20k or 30k, okay, fine. I always like to be a little bit conservative, but in general you got like 150 or $170,000 that could be better allocated, in my opinion, towards investing if your long term goal is having a higher net worth. How does that strike you? Both.

[Nicole]

That sounds great.

[Shane]

Yeah, it sounds great.

[Ramit Sethi]

Good. So that right there will give you a little bit of an edge as you start to invest. Coming down now, your fixed costs are pretty low. Could you cut some of it? Maybe a bit, but not much. You know, you could maybe cut 100 bucks off subscriptions, but like, what's the point? I would try to get it down to 60%. It's here that is an issue, which is you're investing 31%. You know, you can reverse engineer the whole thing, but just conceptually, 20, 22, 23%, you're quite a bit over. So let's try to drop this down a bit. Well, the reason is you have, you're investing for very expensive tuition and you got a committed $6,000 a year for your niece or nephew. This amount right here, Nicole, this $550 for your niece or nephew. It actually should be a fixed cost and we could move it up to we'll call it tuition. By the way, whoever's spending 300 bucks a month on clothes, no more. Sorry. Now you're at 65% fixed costs. You can make it work. You can, but you can't get a new car and you got to stay in the same place. So we're down here. It's looking okay. Savings are at 5%. I don't mind that you already saved up so much money. You have a fat emergency fund. Your Investments are at 31. I don't think that's going to work. Let's just drop this down to 500 and see what happens. All right. So what I did was I took one of your investment accounts from $1,000 to $500 a month. You're still investing 26%. You now have $411 or 4% for guilt free spending. It's a better number. I think this number needs to be higher. I don't think the two of you can get by every month only spending $411.

[Shane]

Absolutely not.

[Nicole]

I want it to be like a little limiting.

[Ramit Sethi]

How limiting? Because right now it's 411 bucks.

[Nicole]

I know. Which is like a hundred dollars a week.

[Shane]

That's both of us.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah.

[Shane]

That's not just you. That's me and you.

[Nicole]

I know, like, I upped the grocery because I want to, like, I want to reel this in in order to make the long term goal, like, happen. So whether 400 might not be enough, but I want it to be a low number because the other things are far more like, important to me now than being able to dine out.

[Ramit Sethi]

Can I make a point? I actually think it's really cool that you are doing this ahead of getting married. You are thinking about some kind of tricky questions about combining quite different lifestyles. And there are some obligations that we have, you know, taking care of niece or nephew. There's a potential baby, but we don't know when. And then eight years from now, there's two. Like there's a lot of uncertainty. We are not looking for the perfect math at this stage. We're not looking for that. What we are looking for is just general thrusts that put us in the right universe. So when it the initial math told us that you're going to end up with $65,000 a year in safe withdrawal income, that's not enough. We all know that. So you needed to make rapid changes, which you did. Okay. But what is not counted here when we talk about you having 3. 2.6 or 2.8 or 3.1 million is, when is Shane going to retire? What's not clear here is Nicole's income. And Nicole, you may decide, hey, I have the baby. I can't go back to traveling as a nanny. But I am going to find another way to make income with the baby, right? Or I'm going to wait two years,

four years, six years, whatever the number is. So there are lots of things that you can change.

You don't have to get it perfect right now. These are really high leverage things to talk about, you know, hey, what are the big things that we want to do in our life that will make it extraordinary and meaningful? It's your rich life.

I don't think you need to have

all the perfect answers today. Okay. As you get older, though, you do need to. It needs to come into sharp focus. And at 48 and 40, you got to be making some aggressive moves. So what I'm happy about is that you're talking about this now and that you happen to have $265,000 sitting in cash. That's nice. I think that if you really take time and look at your old habits of relating to money, you might discover, like, hey, you know, we were, like, doing pretty well in certain areas, but in other areas, we were just blind to it. Okay, that's in the past. What are we going to do now? So when I look at your numbers, I think certain things are pretty straightforward. You have a low rent, huge, amazing advantage. You both have a couple things. You're like, this is important to us. There are certain things I still don't know the answer to. Like you mentioned, you both would like, maybe there's a boat, maybe there's a house on the coast, etc. I actually don't know how to make that happen. With your current income, it might not be possible. Might be the case that you rent a boat once in a while or that, you know, you do an Airbnb type thing that might be possible. Lots of creative ways to accomplish it. I do think that we made some tough assumptions. Like in this entire calculation, Nicole, I assumed your income was already cut by 50%, but it's not. You're actually making an extra 4, $4,500

per month until you have a baby.

So that's a lot of extra money that we didn't account for anywhere. My point is you don't have to get everything perfect, but you have to know the general framework of where you want the money to go. You have time. You have a lot of time before your income goes down. And So I would use that time really wisely.

In 11 days, Nicole and Shane are getting married.

[Shane]

Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Their numbers were messy. The accounts were all confusing and tangled. The CSP took a lot of work to figure out. And there are still questions that we haven't fully answered.

Fine.

I don't expect perfection on these calls. What I want you to understand is that most couples spend months planning a wedding without ever sitting down and asking, how much do we have? How much can we afford? What is our philosophy on money? And to Nicole and Shane's credit, they did that 11 days out from their wedding. That takes a lot of courage. Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Every day you leave money sitting in a savings account without investing it, you are losing money. I'm not talking about an emergency fund. I'm just talking about I don't know where to invest. Investing feels like gambling. No, we are getting over that today. I have a freaking book. I will teach you to be rich. You can get it from any public library in the country. Some of you are losing a dollar a day in lost investment returns. Some of you are losing much, much more. Can you imagine? I came to your hometown, kicked your freaking shoddy door down and said, hey, give me $75 today. And then I just tore it up like a bully, like Biff from Back to the future 2. And I said, I'm come back tomorrow, do the same thing again. And I did it every single day. That's what's happening because you're letting your money sit in your savings account. That is the math of compounding working against you. Don't do it. Fix it. Nicole and Shane, they have the income, they have assets. And now they are starting to have a shared vision. Private school, a home, someday a rich life. Now they have the tools and the urgency to start building their rich life using the money that they have now. Let's check out their follow ups.

[Nicole]

Hi, Ramit, it is Shane and Nicole. We are a few weeks post interview and we are officially married and we had a few updates for you.

[Shane]

Yeah, hi, Ramit. We both funded our Roth IRAs. I had never had a Roth IRA, so I funded 2025 and 2026, which was really great. We both put $50,000 from our savings into our individual investment account. And we're gonna pretty much like tranche that out over the next six months just in case anything happens in the market. What else do we do? Baby?

[Nicole]

I have separated my business expenses. We hired an accountant, so we have an appointment with him. In the coming weeks. I opened a personal checking account to be separated from the business checking account, and then we opened a joint credit card to benefit Miles and Travel, which is one of our buckets. So thank you again. It was very fun speaking with you. And there's our update. Thanks so much.

[Ramit Sethi]

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