← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1973: Strangers: A Review of the Marriage Memoir Everyone's Talking About
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- [02:33]
B
I kind of think of this as the things are good trap. And I think it's very easy for folks with enough financial stability to fall into a trap of, well, things are good. We can do everything we want to do. Our kids can go to the camps they want to go to. We do. We go on our vacations. We own our home. I mean, like, of course I'm generalizing, but I think that at many income levels, people kind of say to themselves, can talk themselves into this idea of, like, I'm going to not rock the boat with this. I'm not going to ask too many questions because I'm doing my thing, he's doing his thing, and things are good. Or at least I believe things are good until they're not. Until they're not.
- [03:13]
A
Welcome to so Money, everybody. I'm Farnish Tarabi. It is a tale as old as time. Woman meets man, woman marries man. Woman says, honey, you handle the money. She trusts him. She builds the life. She raises the kids. She keeps everything running. And then one day, he leaves. He's gone. And so is her financial footing. So when I first picked up Strangers, which is currently the number one New York Times bestselling memoir by Bell Burden, I'll be honest, I had a little bit of an eye roll. I thought, okay, here we go again. Another story about a woman putting the entirety of financial life in her husband's hands, falling apart. But then I read it, and like so many of my friends and peers, I could not put this book down. Yes, it's juicy. It's got Upper east side, Martha's Vineyard, Hamptons, all of it. But underneath it all, it's something else entirely. It is a master class in what can go wrong when you opt out of your financial life. And not because someone hid something from you, but because you chose to not look. And that's in part what makes this story hit so hard. We're gonna go deeper into all of it, and I've called in reinforcements. My friend, financial expert and attorney Heather Bonaparte, is here. She's the co author of the book Money Together. She read the book faster than I did. And we are unpacking the money, the power dynamics, the red flags, and so many of the lessons about trust, transparency, and agency in relationships. Let's get into it. Heather Bonaparte, welcome back to so Money. My gosh, thanks for having me.
- [04:57]
B
I'm so excited we're doing this.
- [04:59]
A
We're going to copilot this, this, this requires. We need all hands on deck.
- [05:03]
B
All hands on deck. I mean, this, this was like born from the DMs. You and I were like popping off. We're like, we need to talk about this.
- [05:11]
A
Let's get into it. So audience has audience. You know, I've been talking about this for some time that I have been immersed in this book called Strangers. It's right now, as we are recording the number one New York Times best selling book by Belle Burden about her marriage, a memoir of marriage and her. The. Really the, the. The breakup of her marriage. And I will say that at the beginning of this book, as I embarked on it, I, I was like kind of eye rolling it. I had sort of a stink eye about it just because I thought, well, here we go again. I had obviously a pr. I had an understanding of what I was getting myself into. I had watched the Oprah interview snippets. I had understood the synopsis, the Wall Street Journal excerpt, all of it. The idea being that this woman, this aristocrat, for all intents and purposes, correct, an heiress.
- [06:04]
B
An heiress.
- [06:05]
A
A Vanderbilt descendant, not to be judgy, but I, you know, can't help myself, factual. Have sort of like the trad wife, the modern trad wife set up, right? Mary's the hedge fund guy, she's independently wealthy. I'm g. A very high level synopsis here, and the very sort of salacious, like gossipy version of it. But then he leaves her in the very beginning of the pandemic, sort of like out of the blue, and no explanation, except for the fact that I'm sleeping with another woman, Leigh abandons her and her three children, and she's sort of left with all of it, all of the, like, work. And then fast forward many months later when they're in the divorce proceedings to find out that because of their really crappy prenup that he had also amended right before their wedding to make sure that he was really taken care of in this, in this kind of situation. He wants to come after her to get his fair share of the homes that they own. So now this is like really bad news for her because yes, she's an heiress, but she had used, basically, she'd emptied her trust accounts to buy these homes and had put them in his name and her name. Not only was she going to get no money from in the divorce, because P.S. in that prenup it had stated that, um, whatever money they had accumulated in the marriage, money that was in accounts with their individual names on them, would just take. They. It would be their assets in the divorce proceeding.
- [07:31]
B
Right. All money owed would be owned by them. All money that was accumulated during the course of the marriage would stick with whoever accumulated it.
- [07:41]
A
Right? Right. Including property, including banks and bank accounts, all of the things. So the homes were in their joint names, bank accounts. His were in his names. She had no idea how much were in his bank accounts. And then. So then she. And she stopped working essentially during the marriage. So she was not making any money. Her only wealth was the inheritances, which she used, she tapped to buy these homes.
- [08:05]
B
And she made it clear that it's not even that he was hiding the money. She didn't look. She didn't want to look.
- [08:12]
A
She didn't want to look.
- [08:13]
B
She didn't need to look.
- [08:14]
A
So I kind of knew all this going in. I didn't know all of the financial details, but I kind of had, like, the idea of, like, okay, he's going to leave her for broke, using air quotes. I mean, not really, because she could go always. Like, she has a. She has a fallback plan. Like, she could always live on the Upper east side with her mom. Like, hey, let's be honest, right? But I read it, and I had friends who said, I read it in a day. You got to read it, wink, wink. And I was almost like, oh, my God, what's going to be waiting for me in this book? And I will say, you know, okay,
- [08:42]
B
that was the same preface that everyone gave to me. And I'm like, heather, you got to read it. You're gonna go nuts. And I'm like, so I've talked a lot.
- [08:50]
A
Right now I want to first hear your, like, you. You finished the book in a. In a big, like, what, in a day?
- [08:55]
B
Same thing. One or two days, Handful of days.
- [08:57]
A
It took me eight days. I'm a slow reader. Give me the high level takeaway and then we'll get into it.
- [09:02]
B
My gut. My gut tells me and, you know, I'm like a. I'm like a natural empath, like, almost to a fault. I really am. I was angry, of course, because it kind of felt like watching like a slow moving, you know, train wreck that I knew. I knew what was going to happen. And I felt it. And I felt her. I felt so deeply for her. Searching for answers, especially in those first couple months and being, like, surprised by his callousness during the course of the divorce. I really felt for her. But I also felt this was just a prime example of how financial problems and these types of power dynamics that are at play in this particular, particular relationship that's outlined in this book can play out at any income level. So to me, like a cautionary tale indeed.
- [09:53]
A
How many books have been written, Yours included? Mine included. Stacks and stacks of financial books included. Basically say, watch out, ladies. You need to be involved in your marriage at a financial level. Do not stick your head in the sand for this reason, you know, other reasons. It's empowering, and you should be involved and you're entitled and, like, you're in a marriage. And if you're gonna share things, you should also share in the decisions, like, and, and, and. Right, and, and, and, and, and. Okay. But I think that there is something way more powerful in a Bell Burden writing a memoir of marriage at her level, right. This sort of modern aristocrat. First of all, it's a beautifully written book. And also, how sad, right? How sad and beautiful. Has always had this gorgeous talent in her. She's a shy person. Right? She's written about that. She's crushingly shy person and had her writing spirit demolished at a very young age and never really pursued it. It needed this. Needed this sort of tragedy to bring it out of her age, you know, in her 50s. Okay. That aside, she writes this incredibly, like, read it in a day, gulpy book. And then it's also like, you know, you're learning about all the juiciness, you know, the Upper east side, the Martha's Vineyard, the Hamptons. She takes us to all these, like, behind the scenes, like, wow, social.
- [11:19]
B
Yeah, the social pressure and the appearance and the betrayal of realizing who would really stand by what these. What are these friendships and these relationships? What do they actually stand on, aside from the status quo of you both being rich and married and whatever those married things are that you do together? Like, I think she was realizing, like, how hollow it all was. I mean, it was hard. It was.
- [11:43]
A
And so you're reading it furiously and then sort of subtly weaving in this subtext of like, hey, watch out. You know what I mean?
- [11:55]
B
Because look what happens.
- [11:56]
A
And I love that she wrote it so, like, so politely and so evenly, like, it wasn't like, look what he did to me. You know, like a hundred. Took accountability. Took accountability where she needed to.
- [12:11]
B
And isn't that so hard in this work, too? I mean, I. I look at the way in which I've tried to approach women especially, who have stepped. Not only stepped back from the workforce, because it's not just about women who earn or don't earn an income, but it's about Women who have said, I've made a conscious choice to not be involved in our finances. I trust him. Which is a line that I've heard a lot, right. And to try and find a way to politely say and provide the tough love of saying, like, this is not about trust. This is about more agency. It's about your options, about visibility and transparency. Transparency and trust are. Are mutually exclusive.
- [12:50]
A
Right?
- [12:51]
B
And so, you know, I. I love the way that she was a. Critical of herself and of the way that she had let things become, I think, so many of us. And I. I'll speak for myself too, in a. Of incredibly difficult caregiving and pandemic parenting with two young children, maintaining a corporate job full time. I mean, like, there's pieces of me that really identified with what she was saying. And I. I know many women that say, like, I stepped away from the fi. From the family finances because it felt like the only thing I wasn't responsible for. And she had said, I mean, she. She romanticized it in a way that, like, I. It's not the way I viewed it, but she basically said, like, what a beautiful thing that he could provide for our family in this way. And I provided in this way. And we basically both just stayed in our lanes and, you know, and that's what it was. But that's. That can't. That can't be how we do things. That can't be how it works.
- [13:51]
A
Part of me, as I was reading, couldn't help but realize, like, you know, sometimes it does work out. Sometimes you are that couple that the wife does the house, wifery things and the, you know, like, there is a version of her story that is true out there that does end happily ever after. I mean, who really ever knows? Because he could have been cheating on her behind the scenes and she would have never known. Like she writes in the book, like, I don't know if this was the first time he had an affair and he just got caught, but in her mind, it was working out. You know what I mean?
- [14:24]
B
But, like, also, like, what is the happily ever after? Is it that they were, you know, that they were faithful to one another? Or is it that a wife remained in the dark for 40 years and God forbid one day her husband passes and she has no idea where her money is, where the ass her kids take over for her? Is that the idea of happily ever after? Do you know what I mean? So I know. I think we all know couples. I'm sure you do too. Like, I know. Oh, yeah, I know a ton of Women who are totally clueless about their finances.
- [14:52]
A
Yeah, I was. I just had on the show. It hasn't aired yet, but Mrs. Dow Jones, Haley, she's got a book coming out, and she actually interviews Bell Burden on her podcast called Financial Tea. I haven't listened to that yet, but she kind of shared a little bit of what they discussed and this dynamic. And I don't know if you interviewed anybody in your book Money Together, that had this dynamic going on where the woman, as a young girl, right. As a young child, you are under the sort of financial domain of your family, obviously, and then you get older, and then you then sort of immediately get into the financial domain of your partner. Like, there's no independence in between. You don't get to ever practice your own financial independence, which is essentially what Belle experienced. Right. Even her nanny. Her. You read about her very strict, awkward nanny who was Catholic and would force her to go to service and use her allowance to donate. Do you remember that scene in the book? And I was like, even then, she was forced to do things with her money she didn't want to do and would do it. She was a financially obedient person even as a kid.
- [16:03]
B
All the good. All the good that she did what she was told.
- [16:08]
A
Yeah. And I have friends, contemporary friends, who kind of grew up, up in that way too, where, like, the parents took care of them, and Even in their 20s, the parents sort of supported them. They got married, then the husband supported them, and it was. That was just the arrangement until the husband didn't, and then until they don't.
- [16:29]
B
And I think, you know, it's really easy. I kind of think of this as the things are good trap. And I think it's very easy for folks with enough financial stability to fall into a trap of, well, things are good. We can do everything we wanna do. Our kids can go to the camps they wanna go to. We do. We go on our vacations, we own our home. I mean, like, of course I'm generalizing, but I think that at many income levels, people kind of say to themselves, can talk themselves into this idea of, like, I'm gonna not rock the boat with this. I'm not gonna ask too many questions because I'm doing my thing, he's doing his thing, and things are good. Or at least I believe things are good. Until they're not. Until they're not.
- [17:11]
A
Let's talk about the red flags in the marriage. Okay. Even before they got married.
- [17:17]
B
Oh, yeah.
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A
Way early on in the book. Okay. This. This really got me I need to
- [17:22]
B
know which tidbit this is.
- [17:25]
A
How about how his dad did the
- [17:27]
B
same exact thing, her putting that together, like, towards the end. Towards the end, and realizing, look, we are such, like, creatures of our circumstances that I think, like, you cannot, like, discount the fact that they very much kind of, like, became the thing that they grew up around. Both.
- [17:46]
A
Yes. I mean, yes, she worked very hard to not, though, be. I mean, she talks about, like, maybe she really loved her family. She, like, idolized her grandmother and her mother and her dad and her stepmother. She actually had a wonderful family in that sense. Like, so many traditions, so much. So much richness and not just the monetary kind. And that said, I think she was lonely as a kid. And she wrote about that. Really kind of felt like, as a mom, I want to be, like, she would say, I want to be the potted plant for my teenagers. You know, like, when they come home, I want to be there for them. I want to be there at the pickups. Because she didn't have that as a kid. And so in that sense, I think she wanted to reverse that legacy in her life. Not the financial stuff, unfortunately. Well.
- [18:36]
B
Well, maybe she did it at the expense. Like, that's the thing. She had focused so hard on trying to build this strong, stable nuclear family, that she had done it at the expense of asking the questions about the person that she was marrying. It felt to me like she didn't have the full picture, to your point, even about, like, to not really know. Like, the right questions weren't truly asked. I mean, I. Yeah. And we had discussed this a little bit beforehand, but just this idea of the privilege and the wealth disparity between the two of them, I really wonder. And it really. It wasn't discussed much in the book in terms of the conversations that the two of them may have had or didn't have around that. But it felt to me like she was carrying the weight of some sort of, like, guilt around the family money. And that was. And almost. I don't know if guilt's the right word, but it definitely, like, her offer to pay for these properties out of her trust was.
- [19:36]
A
Yeah.
- [19:37]
B
Like an acknowledgement.
- [19:38]
A
Yeah.
- [19:39]
B
Of the fact that they came from different worlds, but that that shouldn't stop them from having a beautiful, rich life together. And here's my offering towards that.
- [19:48]
A
My gosh. There was a scene in the book where, you know, later on. Oh, gosh. You were like, oh, my. It makes you even more enraged about this earlier scene where they go on vacations and he would, you know, you're at the hotel and there's, let's say the all you can eat breakfast and you know it's expensive per person. It can be like we just came back from LA. Like it was like 38 per person for like the breakfast buffet and you get like cereal and a hard boiled egg.
- [20:15]
B
So stupid.
- [20:16]
A
And so he would make her, he would skip that and he would make her bring her smuggle upstairs a mandarin orange and a hard boiled egg or whatever it was. Meanwhile, he's starting a Rolex watch collection for himself. So the, the point being he would sort of nickel and dime their joint expenditures. He would line, he would go through all the line items on their credit card bills. He would be very tight with their monthly spending when it came to their family stuff. But he was very much no budget when it came to his personal expenditures.
- [20:55]
B
Yeah, isn't that interesting because you know, she, when she first started writing about that in the book, it felt like she was almost like honoring the fact that he was so fiscally responsible and oh, these are his quirks. This is what he does. And he is, he's looking out for,
- [21:14]
A
he's really looking out for us.
- [21:15]
B
Yeah, looking out for us. In reality, like there was a wildly selfish component to that that maybe she just wasn't fully aware of the extent of it.
- [21:25]
A
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A
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- [24:27]
A
Have you read any articles where. Because obviously he hasn't done any interviews. The husband and I'm really, really curious to understand his psychosis because what is that? All we know is her sort of portrayal of him, right? Sure. He's obviously read the book. He had to read the book before it came out. According to Bell Burden, he had a couple of technicalities he wanted corrected. Nothing about his sort of emotional state or, you know, I think the joke being that like he needed like the joke was like make sure that my promotion was stated correctly on page 246, you know, as opposed to the fact.
- [25:01]
B
It's wild, isn't it?
- [25:03]
A
Yeah. God, yeah. I'm just curious, like, what is that was fine with her writing an essay about their Marriage for Modern Love in the New York Times, which then led to the book. He was fine with the book. He's not fine with the book. He didn't fight her, essentially on any of the book where there was no lawsuit. Can you imagine Donald Trump, you know, if he. Oh, my God.
- [25:22]
B
Could you imagine if one of his.
- [25:25]
A
Right.
- [25:26]
B
It would never. Right. But, like, you know, we can only. We can only make assumptions because it doesn't seem. I haven't read anything factual about how he feels about the book and about, like, why he allowed it to move forward. I mean, look. And again, assumptions based on my own past as a lawyer and kind of like just looking at, like, zooming out to look at big picture. We look at her family, big powerful media family like her. Her grandfather, I think, may have been the founder of CBS as well and the Vanderbilt lineage. Her father was the founder of the Village Voice, like friends in publishing. Maybe there was some. Maybe. Maybe there was some. You know, maybe he knew he didn't have a leg to stand on. In reality, based on whatever the finalized divorce said on what she was and wasn't allowed to say. Maybe he just. And maybe that's why the book so carefully tells the story from her perspective. You know, she really doesn't use a lot of adjectives to describe him. She doesn't really say anything derogatory about him. It's really an examination of her and her perception and pov, basically, of what happened, which I really appreciate because I
- [26:35]
A
give him a lot of grace, I have to say.
- [26:37]
B
A lot of grace. She does give him a lot of grace. But I think that maybe there's something there about, like, what the divorce decrees said or didn't say in terms of what she was allowed to go out in this world and do. And again, we go back to, like, her perspective of his position on the divorce and everything, because he played dirty.
- [26:56]
A
He did.
- [26:56]
B
He really did. So let's talk about that.
- [26:59]
A
That was a kind of a plot twist, if there ever was one in this kind of a story. So as we discussed, they had this prenup. So let's talk about this prenup. The mother, Belle's mother, had apparently a contract with her son and Belle, the two. The two siblings, saying, if you ever get married, you must have a prenup with your spouses. So that was a. Yeah. Like, I never really ever thought it would get to that extent. But okay, so that is a deal that she's got with her. And now, days before their wedding, she's trying to push her Husband whom she calls James, although his real name is Henry in the book, in real life, she calls him James in the book to sign this prenup. And he's not happy about it. The prenup essentially says, you know, in the event of a divorce, you don't get anything. That is my inheritance, my trust money. He goes, well, I have one more thing to add. And that is when they amend it to say, whatever money we earn in the marriage that goes into our individual accounts, it remains ours in a breakup. Got you. Okay. She said, fine. And then even her lawyer was like, this is weird. Like, dumb. Yeah, dumb.
- [28:08]
B
Was not happy.
- [28:09]
A
Yeah. Like, this is very, very rare. Like, I've never really seen this in any prenup. And she's like, well, that's what he wants. And that's what.
- [28:16]
B
And I think this. This is important, too. That change was effectuated, I think, something like five days before they married. Yeah. I'm going to draw that parallel to the end where he brought her to the courthouse steps in terms of negotiating their divorce. There is truth in, like, legal proceedings especially, I mean, not just family legal proceedings, but in any legal proceeding into wearing down one of the negotiations, one of the negotiating parties, like, and bringing them to the brink of whatever the big event is that you're trying to, like, finish the negotiation for. Timing matters here. No, you should not have been still negotiating this five days before your wedding. He basically wore her down. Yeah, that's what it felt like to me. He wore her down. There wasn't really time. Like, you don't wanna negotiate under pressure. I mean, and look like it's just timing mattered here, too, and it just. It felt. It felt. It felt wrong to me. But I also, like, I'm gonna view this from the other standpoint, from his standpoint. And this is like, a hot take. And people may not agree with this, but you have to also remember this is someone that is not, like, does not come from even a remote, like, breadcrumb of wealth compared to her. And so he could have been receiving advice on his end that he should be maintaining the wealth that he earns during the course of the relationship. I'm not saying that it was right, but it is. I. I can understand why someone would have given him that legal advice, and somewhere in the middle would have been something that felt equitable, not what ultimately was agreed to. But I understand why someone coming into a relationship where there's a great wealth disparity.
- [29:50]
A
Yeah.
- [29:52]
B
Might feel a disparate need to protect the income that they Earn during the course of the marriage.
- [29:57]
A
I'm gonna sidebar here really quick because I want to stick with this prenup through line, but I do. I have run into this theme recently where men who are wealthy during the marriage, they, like, become professionally successful. They start making money. Maybe not in the beginning of the marriage, but then they accumulate wealth. They marry women who come from wealthy families, and then the wife doesn't work or maybe works, but doesn't make as much as him in a divorce. They're like, well, why should we split assets? Like, you have your wealthy family. They actually think that. It's like, they have that antiquated view of marriage.
- [30:34]
B
And I think. I think that that is a hundred percent, like, in my mind, was his mindset during the course of the divorce. Right. Like, his callousness. And it wasn't, like, explicitly said again, because we're seeing this through her pov. But you can't imagine a world in which her family wealth didn't play into the way in which he treated her during the course of the divorce. He had to think, she'll be fine. The kids. Now put aside the kids. That's a whole other thing. Like, you don't even get a condo that's big enough for your kids to stay with you is there's. There's no amount of conversation you could be having around money that can excuse that type of behavior.
- [31:12]
A
Yeah,
- [31:14]
B
it all felt like, yeah, like, I think he was thinking about her wealth in a lot of this.
- [31:19]
A
And then, of course, they go to court. And this is the split personality he had. Right? He would, like, see her during visitations. Hey, Belle, blah, blah, how's it going? And then, you know, cleat 180 with the lawyers being like, you know, he wants his fair share of the home, since that's what the prenup said. And she's like, well, then, now I have nothing because I have to sell these houses. I can't buy him out. I don't have any money left.
- [31:47]
B
Right?
- [31:48]
A
So this is where she really spirals and gets diagnosed as suicidal, essentially having suicidal ideation. And I. And I have a moment reading the book where I go, oh, my God, she's terrified. And, oh, my God, she needed this to happen because she's actually, like, she's gone to the edge. And I know how this will end. Cause she survives, so I know how this ends. Like, it doesn't end badly. What? And then the next few lines, she said, this needed to happen to me.
- [32:18]
B
It's like, you felt it before I know the exact place.
- [32:22]
A
You know it, right? It's like. It's like 30 pages before the book ends. He doesn't end up doing the dirtiest. He ends up giving her the homes.
- [32:30]
B
He took her to the brink. It was right before they were supposed to go to trial. They, they. They played it out till the very end. And, and he ended up.
- [32:38]
A
Why do you think he did that?
- [32:40]
B
Litigation strategy. Okay, so tactic.
- [32:43]
A
Okay, but then why, though? Then what's his leverage? He's what. So I know they didn't have to go to trial. They were like. He's like, if you take. If you. I will. If you can settle with me, I will give you the home. So what did they settle on?
- [32:55]
B
I don't think we know the full details of what those probably were. I'm sure there were other terms in there we don't know about, but I think, yeah, it's hard because we're viewing this in a vacuum. Right. Like, why would he take it there? What else was like the linchpin of this negotiation that we're missing? I think we're just missing that information. But there's definitely a reason why he held the homes as a. As a major piece of leverage in that negotiation. Why he held on for so long. And I'm sure he was just instructed by his lawyers because you're right, like split personality. But I've heard. I've heard that that's not that uncommon. You receive that advice by a divorce attorney. I mean, it's. It's in. Obviously it's in poor form. It's in terrible taste, especially against someone you've. Like. I don't understand. I mean, like, personally on a. From a. How could you ever treat somebody that you've ever loved exactly that way?
- [33:44]
A
So gross.
- [33:44]
B
And you're the bad actor. Like, you know, but. But it happens. My point is that it happens all the time.
- [33:51]
A
And like, there's one scene towards the end after all of this, she's like in downtown New York City, and she hears a man calling her name.
- [34:00]
B
Belle.
- [34:00]
A
Belle. Waving his hands like a long lost friend. And she looks over and it's her ex. I'm like, what, this psychopath?
- [34:08]
B
She definitely made him look like a real schmuck in that scene. Like, I was like, run, but call 91 1. But you know what was really heartbreaking? What I found to be heartbreaking in those months and years of. I. Maybe I've lost track of the amount of time in which they were negotiating their divorce and how long the divorce took, but you could feel the sense of betrayal from people in their lives, from social people, socially, in their lives, especially out in Martha's Vineyard. You could feel kind of like there were different narratives being sold on what was happening, and they weren't all hers. There were people who, even in terms of who gets to keep the club membership, oh my God. You know, and. And I think she was realizing in that moment, like, how devalued she was in the eyes of some of the people that they had surrounded themselves with and how not only her husband, but maybe some of the other men in the circles that they had spent their time and look at the women in their lives. That to me, like, that really rubbed me the wrong way.
- [35:07]
A
Yeah, it was a. It was a revelatory book. Not just about her marriage and the demise of her marriage and the red flags and the. And all the things, but really to your point, the. The world that we all live in, not just her world.
- [35:22]
B
Absolutely.
- [35:23]
A
But the mindset that we, that, that people, all people of all levels of society carry an exercise when it comes to money and relationships and status and what it means to trust someone, what it means to be a family, what it means to share in deceiving.
- [35:43]
B
Absolutely.
- [35:44]
A
Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.
- [35:46]
B
He had said a line that I had highlighted because this was such a central theme of our book about contribution and kind of redefining what it. My whole thing is like. I want to redefine what it means to contribute because way too many people hold this very narrow minded view that we can only contribute by earning money, and that money is the only way in which we give to our family. And that is just simply not true. Caregivers provide in many ways. We provide in the way that we love our family, our children, our elders, our community. We provide in the way that we share our time. And also those folks who have chosen to spend their life focusing on caregiving, make so much of the income earning spouse's time and energy and, you know, ascension in their own career possible. So she had said a line that was something like. There was a moment when I realized that my 20 years, 20 years of the way in which I contributed to our family meant absolutely nothing to him. And I thought about it. I'm like, they have a completely different view of what it means to contribute. And she really, I mean, she. She is a fantastic mother. You could see that even from the way in which her closeness with her can feel it. You could feel what she wanted for her family. You could. And so it was heartbreaking for her. It was heartbreaking for me to read about her realizing how much he had really devalued her contribution to their marriage and their family. Wow.
- [37:12]
A
Well, you have written a really great take on this book from your through your lens. You have a substack that everyone should subscribe to. I'm gonna link that in our show notes. But I really, I, I, I, I wanted to wait to read it until I'd read the book. And, and I really can't get enough of everyone's reviews of this book. And I really love that it has started so much dialogue and discussion.
- [37:37]
B
I, I agree in so many ways.
- [37:39]
A
Right. Like circles that don't normally talk about money, now we're talking about money.
- [37:43]
B
It has brought so many women, even just anecdotally women that I know in my town who are not earning an income, to ask themselves first, am I comfortable with my lack of involvement in our household finances? And, and there's many of them saying no, maybe it's time for me to sit back down. Because you know, truthfully, whether you, there is nothing wrong with stepping back from the workforce, there is nothing wrong with that. And I, I don't look down on that. I don't look down on a season of caregiving at all. But you do not want to cede your financial transparency. You don't want to cede your financial knowledge and all control to your spouse ever.
- [38:21]
A
I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read a quote that Belle writes at the end of the book. She says, because now she is like with her with a vengeance. She is like learning. She has a financial advisor, a female financial advisor. She's just learning and learning and learning, you know, as much as she can. And she's like, I love it. And she says slowly, over many months, as my head came out of the sand, a form of joy set in. Joy born of replacing the not knowing with knowing. The nub of worry with clarity, the lack of control with control. So the joy of it, though, I
- [38:57]
B
love that I could not agree more. Like, just realizing that it feels good to know it actually feels good.
- [39:07]
A
I mean, because she talks a lot in the book about the joy of her life. Her, the life that she, that she had when she was married. Right. It was everything she wanted. Imagine if she had that. Plus, like, it doesn't, it's not mutually exclusive, women. It's not. You don't have to choose to be a caregiver, a full time caregiver provider, or someone who knows about the finances of your life. It's not inclusive.
- [39:37]
B
No, I mean, and look, we. Again, like that tough love, like, you owe it. You don't only owe it to yourself. You owe it to your children too, because they went through this experience as well. You know, I mean, I view it like there's many reasons why. Yes. Do it for yourself. Do it for your family too. It's just, it's, it's, it's hard, it's hard to watch. But I've watched so many women step into their own power of knowledge around money. And it doesn't all have to happen in a day. Like, you know, we both could, like, wax poetic about this. Like, it could be baby steps, steps. It's okay. Start with access. Start with the fact that, like, does she even have the logins? Probably to even see. No, she probably didn't. Start with passwords. Start there. I don't care. Start somewhere.
- [40:24]
A
Start somewhere. And you can start today. And you should start today. Actually, today on my to do list is we just, my husband and I were working with a new financial planner to just, you know, and every, every once in a while we gotta, like, sit down and revisit the plan because,
- [40:41]
B
yeah, you gotta keep it fresh.
- [40:42]
A
You gotta keep it fresh. I need to know when I can retire from this, from this situation. I mean, never retiring, really, but it's always good to get updated.
- [40:55]
B
It is.
- [40:57]
A
Heather Bonaparte, thank you so much. The join account is your substack, right. And the book that you co authored with Doug, your husband, is called Money Together. I'll put all those links in our show notes and of course, the link to strangers, although I don't think I need to do that. You can just kind of figure that one out on your own. It's in its ninth printing. Can you believe it?
- [41:18]
B
Unbelievable.
- [41:19]
A
Oh, and we should mention it's being turned into a Netflix series with, you can guess, Gwyneth Hall.
- [41:25]
B
Gwen Gwyn.
- [41:26]
A
Oh, my gosh. Thanks so much. This was really awesome and I'm glad we got to do this together.
- [41:31]
B
Same, me too. Thanks for having me.
- [41:36]
A
Thanks so much to Heather Bonaparte for joining me. Links to her substack and her book Money Together in our show notes. I'll see you back here on Friday for AskFarnouche. And I hope your day is so money.
- [42:01]
C
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- [42:29]
B
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